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William Walter Phelps 



His Life 

and 

Public Services 



Compiled by 
Hugh M. Herrick 






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tibe 1;nicficrbocker preee 

■Hew lUorh 

1904 






LIBRARY ot CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
APR 25 1904 

Cooyrleht Entry 

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CLASS y XXc. No. 

s- '^ ' "^ c 

COPY B 



Copyright, i()C4 

BY 

HUGH M. HERRICK 



Published, March, 1904 



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PREFACE 

IN this volume is told the story of the life of William 
Walter Phelps: of his surroundings of refinement 
and culture in his early years; his youthful training and 
devotion to study, fitting him for a career of renown as 
a lawyer, orator, and statesman; how it was his good 
fortune to be intimate with the most exalted men of his 
time and to become the compeer of the leading statesmen 
of the age ; how on attaining the highest rank in diplo- 
macy he conferred, with honor to himself, notable and 
enduring benefits upon his country; how he took the 
joys of life sedately and endured its sufferings silently 
and heroically; how, after reaping the honor of many 
high stations, he died in the prime of his manhood, leav- 
ing no stain upon his private or public life. 

If any explanation be needed of what might seem to 
be more than an amplitude of detail or appear to be an 
irrelevant digression in these annals, it may be said that 
there was available much tempting material that told of 
Judge Phelps's life and its manifold events, his wide sur- 
roundings and his striking personality, and that, even as 
it is, much had to be omitted ; yet the writer was willing 
to incur the charge of being tiresome rather than leave 
the record incomplete. Also, that the career of a public 
man of eminence cannot be thoroughly portrayed with- 
out flashing occasional side-lights upon travellers along 
the same roadway other than the main character. 

There are numerous quotations from the newspapers 
of the land. Much of Judge Phelps's activities were 

iii 



IV 



Preface 



chronicled in the newspapers because he was constantly 
within the focus of public observation and was continu- 
ously doing or saying something that editors thought 
worth telling to the world. The acts of few men in public 
life will bear close scrutiny; those of Judge Phelps's will; 
consequently he was seldom the subject of comments by 
the press which were not laudatorv'. 

This memorial has been prepared for the family and 
descendants of Judge Phelps and for circulation among 
his friends. There was so much in his open life to praise 
and so little to blame that his biographer has given, 
largely upon the testimony of others, the praiseworthy 
record that he made, without any fear that he has over- 
estimated the departed statesman's virtues. It has been 
written, therefore, in no spirit of criticism, but with the 
chief purpose of correctness of statement in the chrono- 
logical arrangement of the occurrences and incidents of 
Judge Phelps's life, and with a desire to give them fully 
and completely. 

It is also intended that this volume shall not only per- 
petuate Judge Phelps's memory with posterity, but be a 
reminder to his descendants of how their distinguished 
ancestor was honored among men in his day and genera- 
tion, and inspire and guide them to an emulation of his 
industrious and useful life. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 



PAGB 



The Phelps Family in England — William Phelps, the Founder of 
the American Branch, Lands at Nantasket in 1630 — Settles at 
Simsbury, Conn. — A Race of Public-Spirited Men — John Jay 
Phelps ........... I 

CHAPTER II 

Early Life of William Walter Phelps — Enters Yale at Sixteen — 
Leaves College to Travel in Ireland for His Health — How He 
Acquired a Phenomenal Memory — Married on Evening of 
Graduation to Miss Ellen Maria Sheffield — The Sheffield 
Family — A Bridal Tour in Europe ...... 14 

CHAPTER III 

Studies Law at Columbia — His First Jury Case — A Successful 
Lawyer — Some of His Largest Cases — Declines a Seat on the 
New York Bench and Settles in New Jersey .... 23 

CHAPTER IV 

His Large Business Interests Compel Him to Give up His Law 
Practice — Builds Railroads and Acquires Land in Texas — En- 
ters New Jersey Politics and Becomes a "Favorite Son" — 
Famous Paramus Convention — Elected to Congress . . . 31 

CHAPTER V 

Takes His Seat in the Forty-third Congress — A Personal Descrip- 
tion — James G. Blaine Becomes His Friend — Comes quickly to 
the Front as a Parliamentary Orator and Debater — Denounces 
the Famous "Salary Grab" — Energetic Speech against the 
Franking Privilege Abuses — A Parliamentary Tilt with a Kan- 
sas Granger .......... 40 

V 



vi Contents 



CHAPTER VI 



PAGE 



Takes a Leading Part on the Currency Question and Gains Fanie 
for His Clear Exposition of a False Currency — Opposes the 
Civil Rights Bill and Loses Caste with His Party— Urges the 
Repeal of the Infamous Moiety Law— Review of His First 
Session — Defeated for Re-election in a Democratic Tidal Wave 
— Felicitous Correspondence with His Successful Opponent . 50 

CHAPTER Vn 

His Second Session — Investigates Louisiana Affairs and Exposes the 
Carpet-baggers — Feted by New Orleans — Leaves Congress — 
His Love for Newspapers and Newspaper Men — Goes to 
Rescue of the New York Tridune—LUe at Teaneck— Travels 
for Health 62 

CHAPTER VIII 

Great Love for Trees— Plants Six Hundred Thousand Trees on His 
Teaneck Estate — Studies Arboriculture in Many Lands — Sup- 
ports Blaine in 18S0— Re-elected to Congress — Hackensack 
Savings Bank Fails— Generosity of Mr. Phelps ... 72 

CHAPTER IX 

Appointed Minister to Austria — His Real Estate in Washington — 
Assassination of President Garfield — Sympathy of the Austro- 
Hungarian Government and People— Generous Contribution to 
the Garfield Fund— A Tour in Oriental Lands— Resigns His 
Mission ........... 86 

CHAPTER X 

Discovers the Resting- Place of His Ancestor, John Phelps, at Vevey, 
Switzerland— Erects a Tablet to His Memory— Letter to His 
Children io3 

CHAPTER XI 

Urged to again Enter Congress— Pathetic Letter to a Friend— Con- 
sents to Be a Candidate— Elected to the Forty-eighth Congress, 
after a Vigorous Campaign, over a Popular Opponent . . 108 

CHAPTER XII 

His Road-Building around Teaneck— His Offers to Englewood 
Start the "Good Roads" Movement in Bergen County and 
over a Million Dollars is Spent as a Result . . . .116 



Contents vii 



CHAPTER Xni 



PAGE 



Re-enters Congress in 1883 and again Becomes Prominent in the 
House — Presents a Bill to Establish Civil Government in Alaska 
— First Appropriation for a National Building in Paterson — 
His Memorable Fight for the Relief of General Fitz-John Porter 
— Smooths out Troubles with Bismarck — Important Committee 
Work to Establish the Manufacture of Ordnance and Armor 
Plates in this Country — Famous Speech to New Jersey Farmers 
— Farming for One's Country . . . . . . .121 

CHAPTER XIV 

The Eno Embezzlement — Mr. Phelps's Successful Efforts to Save 
the Second National Bank of New York from Ruin — A Finan- 
cial Panic Averted by his Skill and Energy .... 141 

CHAPTER XV 

The Blaine Presidential Campaign — Phelps's Brilliant Work for His 
Friend — Caricatured and Maligned — The Sealed Letter — Hard 
at Work in Congress — Recuperating in California . . .147 

CHAPTER XVI 

Elected to Forty-ninth Congress by Increased Plurality — First Ef- 
forts to Raise Embargo on American Pork in Europe — 
Arbitration in Labor Troubles — American Mail Steamship 
Appropriation — Favors Indemnity for Outrage on Chinese — 
Oleomargarine Campaign — He Champions the Cause of the 
Dairy Farmers — Declines to Become Candidate for Governor 
of New Jersey . . . . . . . . . .159 

CHAPTER XVII 

New Year's Reception at Teaneck Grange — Description of the 
Grand and Famous Mansion— The Art Gallery— Mr. Phelps's 
Marked Social Characteristics — A Most Pleasing Host — Unique 
Banquet to U. S. Senator Hiscock — Writes a Noted Biogra- 
phy of Garfield— Helps to Secure Sea Girt to the State— His 
Political Prominence in New Jersey — Friends Put forth His 
Claims for U. S. Senate — Speaks to the Manufacturing 
Jewellers' Association . . . . . . . .173 

CHAPTER XVIII 

A Member of the Fiftieth Congress— Takes an Active Part in the 
Debates — Opposes the Mills Tariff Bill — Able Defence of the 
Industrial Interests of the Country — Advocates a Fractional 



viii Contents 



PACK 



Paper Currency — Sharp Criticism of the Democratic Adminis- 
tration for Abandoning the Cause of American Fisheries — Aids 
a Political Opponent — State of New Jersey Presents Statues of 
Richard Stockton and General Philip Kearny to Congress — 
Mr. Phelps Makes an Eloquent Presentation Speech— His 
Views on Paternalism ........ 183 

CHAPTER XIX 

Destruction of Beautiful Teaneck Grange by Fire — Bears the Severe 
Loss with Calmness — The Picturesque Ruins to Remain Un- 
touched — Stables and Out-Buildings Consumed Five Months 
Later — Family Move to a New Home ..... 193 

CHAPTER XX 

Declines to Continue in Congress — New Jersey Republicans Re- 
solve to Name Him for the Presidency in the National Con- 
vention of 1888 — He Refuses to Have His Name Presented 
— Consents to Become a Candidate for the Vice-Presidential 
Nomination — Receives a Gratifying Support in the Convention, 
but the Claims of the Empire State are Paramount and a Com- 
bination Nominates Levi P. Morton — Active in the Presidential 
Campaign — Takes Part in Nomination of President Harrison — 
The Phelps Guards of Paterson, and Their Warm Reception 
in Washington — Mr, Blaine His Guest when Appointed 
Secretary of State ......... 200 

CHAPTER XXI 

Commissioner to Samoan Conference — His First Meeting with Bis- 
marck — Interesting Extract from His Diary — Has English 
Adopted as Language of Conference — Dubbed the "Peace- 
maker" — Splendid Diplomatic Success — Returns with "Peace 
and Honor" Treaty — Warmly Received by the President, Who 
Presents Him with a Commission as Minister to Berlin — De- 
clines Receptions ....... . . 207 

CHAPTER XXII 

Minister to Germany — The Appointment Popular in the United 
States and in Germany — Cordial Reception at the Berlin Court 
— The Emperor's Friendly Speech at the Presentation — Search 
for a Residence — His First Thanksgiving Dinner at Which 
Many Americans Were Present — Reception by the Empress — 
The Life of a Diplomat — Its Varied Duties and Many Social 
Obligations .......... 223 



Contents ix 



CHAPTER XXIII 

PAGB 

The Phelps Home in Berlin — Mr. and Mrs. Phelps Dine with the 
German Chancellor — Fall of Bismarck — Intimate Friendship of 
the Iron Chancellor and the American Minister — Begins the 
Struggle for the Introduction of American Pork into Germany 
— American Rifle Teams in Germany — International Medical 
Conference — Fourth of July Celebrated at the Kaiserhof — 
The American Minister Presides and Makes a Notable Speech 
— A Trip Home Creates a Political Sensation — Newspaper In- 
terviews — Speech on Irish Home Rule in Paterson — Visits 
His Ancestral Home in Connecticut — A Reception by the 
Union League Club of Hudson County — Interview with Presi- 
dent Harrison and Secretary Blaine — Given Dinner at the 
Union League Club, New York — Returns to Berlin . . . 235 

CHAPTER XXIV 

Koch's Lymph — Phelps's Social Fame in Germany — Hoyt Extradi- 
tion Case — Chicago World's Fair — Takes the Homburg Water 
Treatment, and Meets the Prince of Wales .... 249 

CHAPTER XXV 

American Pork — Grand Official Dinners with Homely American 
Products on the Table — Persistent Work by Phelps Wins Suc- 
cess, but the Closing Negotiations Taken from Him — Newspaper 
Canards — Another Trip to Egypt — Relinquishes His Office to 
His Democratic Successor — Appointed Judge of New Jersey 
Court of Errors and Appeals ....... 254 

CHAPTER XXVI 

Reasons for His Appointment to the Bench — His Commission — 
Return to New Jersey — Tells of His Parting Interview with 
the (ierman Emperor — Sworn in as Judge of the New Jersey 
Court of Errors and Appeals — An Impressive Ceremony . . 265 

CHAPTER XXVII 

Mr. Phelps's Interest in Englewood — Some of the Things He Did 
for the Township — Honored by His Neighbors — A Warm 
" Welcome Home " from Them on His Return from Germany . 270 

CHAPTER XXVIII 

Yale Makes Him a Doctor of Laws — His Continuous and Important 
Work for that University — His Many other Benefactions to 
His Alma Mater — Leader of the "Young Vale" .Movement — 
The Charter Amended — He is Elected a Fellow and Serves 
on the Board for Twenty Years ...... 280 



X Contents 

CHAPTER XXIX 

PAGB 

Koppay's Historical Painting of Phelps and Bismarck — The Minis- 
ter also Depicted on Canvas by Carl Gutherz — His Work on 
the Bench — Dedication of Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at 
New Brunswick — His Reception at the Hamilton Club — 
Elected an Honorary Member of the Chamber of Commerce 
— His Portrait in the New Jersey Capitol .... 301 

CHAPTER XXX 

His Last Illness — Seeks Rest in the South — He Ends His Diary- 
Resigns His Last Public Appointment — His Fortitude in Sick- 
ness — His Daughter Hurries across the Ocean to His Bedside 
— A Peaceful Death ........ 316 

CHAPTER XXXI 

His Funeral — A Day of Mourning in Englewood — Church Filled 
with People from All Ranks of Life — The Sermon — Estimates 
of His Life and Work by Many W'riters ..... 321 

SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES 

Sound Currency .......... 339 

Against the Franking Privilege ....... 360 

In Behalf of Fitz-John Porter 373 

International Commerce ......... 393 

Interstate Commerce ......... 396 

Increasing Subsidies to Mail-Carrying Steamers .... 402 

Chinese Indemnity .......... 405 

Post-Office Appropriation Bill ....... 409 

Presenting the Statues of Stockton and Kearny to Congress by the 

State of New Jersey ......... 416 

Speech of Mr. Phelps before the New Jersey State Board of Agri- 
culture, February 5, 1884 420 

Grand Army of the Republic ........ 442 

Honoring a Dead Soldier ........ 454 

At a New England Dinner ........ 456 



WILLIAM WALTER PHELPS 

His Life and Public Services 



. As this memorial is printed for private distribution, it 
is possible that some who are desirous of possessing the 
volume may not be reached, in which case a limited 
number of copies may be obtained, at the cost price of 
publication, from The Knickerbocker Press, 27-29 West 
Twenty-third Street, New York. 



xu 



WILLIAM WALTER PHELPS: 

HIS LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES 



CHAPTER I 

The Phelps Family in England— William Phelps, the Founder of the 
American Branch, Lands at Nantasket in 1630 — Settles at Simsbury, 
Conn.— A Race of Public-Spirited Men— John Jay Phelps 

WILLIAM WALTER PHELPS was born at Dun- 
daff, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, August 
24, 1839. His father was John Jay Phelps, one of the 
most successful and distinguished merchants and financiers 
of New York City. The progenitor of the Phelpses in 
this country came from England. The ancestry of this 
branch of the Phelps family has been traced back to the 
eleventh century. 

It is recorded that the Phelps family originally came 
from Northern Italy, in the Middle Ages, the name then 
being Guelph. In the early part of the eleventh century 
some of the family emigrated to Germany, where the 
name was spelled P^lps, Velps, or Vulps. Some of these 
who emigrated to Germany went in after-years to Eng- 
land, where the name in time became Phellyppes. but 
always pronounced Phelps. The superfluous letters were 
dropped during the reign of Edward VI., in the middle 
of the sixteenth century. The race became numerous in 
Somersetshire and Gloucestershire and for several hundred 



2 William Walter Phelps 

years furnished many personages of celebrity in English 
history. 

The founder of the family in America from which Wil- 
liam Walter Phelps descended was William Phelps of 
Tewkesbury, England, who came to this country in the 
ship called the Mary and John, which sailed from Ply- 
mouth in 1630. He and his children landed at Nantasket 
(now Hull, Massachusetts), and lived at Dorchester, near 
Boston, for five years, when they moved to Windsor, 
Connecticut. In those days geographical lines were not 
very closely drawn in the colonies, and what was after- 
ward known as Simsbury was considered by general con- 
sent as a part of Windsor, but in fact it was outlying and 
unsurveyed land under Indian titles, and was known as 
Massacoe. Connecticut, however, acquired these lands 
from the Indians, and made a grant of them under cer- 
tain conditions to inhabitants of Windsor. Among those 
who took up land under this grant was Joseph Phelps, 
the son of William Phelps, and he removed there with 
the other grantees before 1669. In 1670 petition was 
made to the General Court of Connecticut for township 
privileges, and the court ordered that the plantation at 
Massacoe be incorporated as the township of Simsbury. 

The Indian neighborhood where Joseph Phelps located 
his lands was called Weatogue, and that is now the name 
of a railroad station about a mile from the first Phelps 
settlement, which of late years has been known as Bushy 
Hill. It is eleven miles from Hartford and two miles or 
more from the present village of Simsbury. The origi- 
nal Phelps homestead at this place is still the home of 
descendants of the pioneer. A few acres and the old 
farmhouse built by Alexander Phelps, who came in a 
direct line from Joseph, and who was John Jay Phelps's 
father, are an inheritance of Captain John J. Phelps, ason 
of William Walter Phelps, but the remainder of the origi- 
nal Phelps estate at Bushy Hill has been acquired by the 
Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D., President of the Board of 



His Life and Public Services 3 

Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the United 
States of America, who married Ellen Ada, the only 
daughter of John Jay Phelps, and the large stone mansion 
on this beautiful spot is the country home of Mr. Dodge 
and his family. 

George Phelps, a brother of the first William, also 
settled at Windsor and Simsbury, but later removed 
to Wcstfield, Massachusetts. P>om this branch of the 
family sprang Anson G. Phelps, the widely known New 
York merchant of the firm of Phelps, Dodge & Co. 

Simsbur>' is pleasantly situated on the Farmington 
River, which winds down from tl^e Berkshire Hills of 
Massachusetts and enters the Connecticut River above 
Hartford, and following the course of the waters, many 
of the descendants of the original settlers went to the 
metropolis, and they and their children became scattered 
all over the country, even to the Pacific States. 

The Phelps family in this country seems always to have 
taken very readily to politics and public affairs, perhaps 
having inherited that propensity from its English ances- 
tors and the pioneer William, for the latter, as soon as 
he made his home in Connecticut, began to be interested 
in the politics and public questions of the day. He held 
various offices high and low and was the first Judge of 
the Circuit Court of the State. Not only was he the 
ancestor of a line of thrifty farmers, but many of his de- 
scendants have been distinguished throughout the Union 
as soldiers, scholars, jurists, governors, diplomatists. State 
and national legislators. William Walter Phelps's great- 
grandfather represented the town of Simsbury for thirty 
successive years in the Legislative Assembly of Connecti- 
cut, and the name of Phelps is found all through the 
roster of the congresses. 

John Jay Phelps, father of William Walter Phelps, was 
born in 1810, at Bushy Hill. The line of descent from 
the pioneer William Phelps was this: I. William Phelps; 
II. Joseph, m. Hannah Newton; HI. Joseph, b. 1667, 



4 William Walter Phelps 

m. Mary Collier, Sarah Case, and Mary Case; IV. Ensign 
David, m. Abigail Pettibone; V. Captain David, b. 1773, 
m. Abigail, daughter of Edward Griswold ; VI. Alex- 
ander, m. Elizabeth Eno; VII. John J. Phelps. 

The father of John Jay Phelps, although the farmer of 
many acres, had many sons and little wealth. He could 
not give his boys a fine education, but in their home they 
were taught to be industrious, frugal, persevering, and 
honest, and thus was laid in the character of John Jay 
Phelps the foundation upon which he built a great fame 
as a successful merchant and foremost man of affairs. 
He had the usual life of toil as a farmer's boy on stubborn 
New England soil, a few months' schooling in the short 
days of the winter, and hard work during the long hours 
of the summer. He followed the plough before he was 
twelve years old, and treading the furrows, there begun 
in his heart a feeling of unrest and a longing for the 
greater knowledge and the greater life beyond the farm. 
His entreaties to be allowed to go out and make "a 
struggle with the world " were finally yielded to by his 
father and mother, and at the age of fourteen, without 
resources except a "brave spirit," he left his country 
home, as many other New England boys have done, to 
seek his future in the world, and, like many other boys 
to whom a college course was impossible, he sought a 
printing-ofifice education. He became an apprentice in 
a newspaper office in New Haven. His progress was 
varied, but he worked so assiduoush* that several years 
before he attained his majority he was the owner of the 
New England Rcviciv, published at Hartford, which was 
then his home. He had George D. Prentice, who later 
became the famous editor of the Louisville Journal, as his 
partner, and the afterwards distinguished poet Whittier 
as his apprentice. A memoir of him by his gifted son said : 

He longed for a wider field, for action, for wealth that should 
spare his children the sacrifices of poverty. In the romances 



His Life and Public Services 5 

he sometimes penned for his country circulation it was easy to 
see the influence of a metropolitan splendor, of a successful 
New York life upon his imagination. His heroes were merchant 
princes, their mansions were rich with the refinement of Euro- 
pean civilization, paintings, statues, books, all the api)liances 
of art exercised a softening influence upon their homes; and 
in the midst of this material splendor, they ruled a household 
growing up in the practice of every New England virtue — in- 
tegrity, charity, public spirit, and patriotism. To believe 
that capital had more influence than a country editor was for 
him to seek capital. Action immediately followed conception. 

The newspaper was sold. He set out to seek increased 
fortune and prominence, going into a new country which 
was then the wilds of Pennsylvania, but which has since 
become the best known "coal region" of the world. 
There, in the little village of Dundaff, he went into the 
service of Col. Gould S. Phinney, a glass manufacturer. 
His services were so valuable that he soon became a part- 
ner in the business, and then married, in 1835, Rachel 
Badgerly Phinney, his partner's daughter. He strove to 
become a successful manufacturer and accomplished his 
Durpose. The future possibilities of a country business 
did not satisfy his restless ambition. He sold out his 
interests in Dundaff, and with the profits he went to New 
York, where he was joined by his cousin of the same age, 
Amos R. Eno, They began business in a humble way, 
but in a few years Eno & Phelps were among the leading 
merchants of that city. After ten years of business suc- 
cess, they dissolved partnership and each established new 
firms. There sprung from the Eno & Phelps concern a 
number of most noted and prosperous mercantile houses 
of New York, among which were Phelps, Chittenden & 
Bliss, S. B. Chittenden & Co., George Bliss & Co., in all 
of which John Jay Phelps was financially interested. His 
energy and indisputable uprightness, and his unerring 
judgment, which was unsurpassed, were the causes of his 
unprecedented success. 



6 William Walter Phelps 

Gradually he retired from the mercantile business, be- 
came an operator in real estate, and made large sums of 
money. He erected blocks of business buildings in New 
York, and was also then one of the very largest owners of 
personal property in the whole country. He was also an 
investor in many other business enterprises, in which he 
was invariably successful, and was in the vanguard of the 
great railroad progress of his time. 

It was through his business foresight in regard to the 
development of the Pennsylvania coal regions that what 
is now known as the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 
Railroad was constructed. He was its largest stock- 
holder and first President, and was one of its Boards of 
managers to the close of his life. He was a director in 
other railroads in which he was a stockholder. During 
the latter part of his life he gave his whole time and at- 
tention, outside of his real-estate demands, to the man- 
agement of railways, banks, trust companies, and other 
corporations in each of which he was a director, and 
in all of which it was said "his will was always the 

It » 
aw. 

The next day after this man of power and eminence was 
laid in his grave, William Walter Phelps, in order that his 
children, when they should grow up, might have a true 
knowledge of their grandfather's character and great 
worth, wrote a letter addressed to his infant daughter, 
Marian, containing a memoir of his father's life, a writing 
which was unexcelled in its tender expressions of filial 
affection, its beauty of thought, the simplicit\- and true 
eloquence of its diction. From this beautiful tribute by 
the son has been derived most of the history of John 
Jay Phelps that will be found recorded in this book. 

Before he was forty years of age he retired from active busi- 
ness with every wish gratified. He was a strong man ; to those 
who knew him but slightly he might have seemed a hard man. 
Having made up his mind to a proper course he was indifferent 



His Life and Public Services 7 

to public comment. He did not despise it: he was indepen- 
dent of it. I can look back to infancy, boyhood, early man- 
hood, and through all the scenes of these varied stages, 
recognize the shadow of his presence ever with me; in them 
all— school, college, political and professional life, I knew his 
eye was on me, his watchful sympathy mine. In them, all 
through these thirty years of life was no declaration of sorrow 
when defeat came to me, or of joy when success crowned my 
efforts. He was an iron furnace so hermetically sealed that 
the seven-fold fire within exhibited no gleam. I never knew 
the philosophy of this strange reticence; probably the lone- 
some hours of boyhood on the Simsbury Hills, the more lone- 
some hours of the fierce struggle he waged for wealth and 
position in youth aided in developing a natural tendency to 
this self-restraint. 

But this man, so apparently cold and austere, was really 
capable of the warmest friendships and the kindest inter- 
est in those whom he thought worthy of his intimacy and 
regard, as letters from him in his early manhood most 
plainly show. Not long after he was settled in business 
at Dundaff, which he then called "The West," and when 
not quite twenty years old and unmarried, he wrote to 
Nathan C. Ely, a young man who had been one of his 
associates in Hartford, as follows: 

As I hear nothing from you I am beginning to believe that 
you consider me minus a letter. If so, here goes. By the 
way, I should like to make such a bargain with you as I en- 
deavored to make with Eno when I lived in Hartford, /. c, I 
offered to go and spend one night in four with him, in return 
for which he was to spend the remaining three with me. To 
bring the matter about, I argued that my accommodations 
were so much superior to his, that they stood respectively as 
one to four. Now what I wish to make of this, is — that you 
in consideration of the abundance of your materials shall fur- 
nish me with three letters, while I return one. Not that this 
arrangement would be perfectly just — but fact is, Ely, this is 
a woful barren country in incident, and 't would be worse 



8 William Walter Phelps 

than horrible to make one out of such " measley " materials. 
However, I will do as you direct in this matter. 

Well, my good friend, how do you flourish? How prosper- 
ing? Like the " green bay tree " I trust. But how can you 
content yourself in that psalm-singing city of yours? Hast 
no desire to go out from among the heathen and make a way 
for yourself in the wilderness regions of the West ? Can you 
content yourself there, treading the same road and pursuing 
the same track with those who are at least twenty-five years 
behind the balance of our people in industry and enterprise? 
They tell me, however, that Hartford is improving— that a 
new era is commencing— that the citadel of Aristocracy has 
been stormed, and its inmates made to "hide their diminished 
heads "—that Jacksonism has disappeared from your borders, 
and that nothing is left of the foul monster but a kind of 
sulphurous smell, which would seem to insinuate that the old 
fellow had gone to " his own place." 

Well, go on; there is a power which can " change the skin 
of the Ethiop " and the spots of the leopard. That and that 
only, will change Hartford this century. 

But come to think again, Hartford is not such a bad place 
as many would suppose, and come to reflect again, I am almost 
inclined to rub out every unkind word I have written over the 
leaf. 'T is even so; when I think a second time of the many 
kindnesses I experienced there— of the many pleasant associa- 
tions connected with my sojourn there — of its city associations 
for improvement and its country advantages for recreation — I 
can say in reference to Boston, New York, New Haven, etc., 
etc. — Many cities have done nobly, but thou, Hartford, ex- 
cellest them all. There, when you read my first opinion of 
Hartford, read the above codicil annexed and say it is like the 
politician's course, on both sides of the fence. 

This woody, hilly country of railroads and canals — of anthra- 
cite coal and " Bitumenous " Irishmen to dig it— of Mynhers 
Dutchmen— of fair weather and pretty girls— is improving 
wonderfully. The ojierations made by the Delaware & Hud- 
son Canal Co. six miles from us, at Carbondale, are really 
astonishing. They are expecting to send down by the canal 
this season ten thousand tons of coal for the New York market. 



His Life and Public Services 9 

They have excavated the banks to the distance of more than 
four hundred feet in several places, — having small railroads 
entering the mines on which the coal is brought out. Ely, 
come out here this fall, will ye, and see me. A visit from you 
will be like the consolations of religion to a dying man — of ex- 
treme unction to the soul of a buried Catholic — for know ye 
that I am in a scripture sense dead to the world — having re- 
nounced it — that is, till I go to New York or Hartford, which 
latter place I am making calculations to visit some four weeks 
hence. 

Why do I never meet with you in New York ? I am in the 
city on an average about once each three weeks. 

How do the Lyceums flourish in your city ? How does my 
old friend the Revinv flourish ? In your next tell me all about 
them, and everything else — not forgetting "old men and 
young men — old maids and maidens." 

This epistle displays just a slight flash-light picture of 
Hartford more than seventy years ago. It shows that 
the writer had a sense of genuine humor, while it gives 
quite a new impression of what John Jay Phelps was in 
his younger days. Other letters written by him show 
that he was a most tender and loving husband. "While 
establishing himself in business in New York, his young 
wife remained for a time in Dundaff, and then how he 
began to make a proper home in New York is told in the 
following letter. He always addressed his wife in the 
most endearinfj terms. 



'to 



Your extremely short letter of the 3rd is received bearing 
tidings of your continued good health. I have a piece of good 
news to tell you. And first, I have hired a house; Second, 
have bought my furniture; and Third, go to house-keeping 
the first of May. There, now you can wander as much as you 
please. Yes, I have hired N. C. Ely's house on Third Street, 
a long way up town, you know, and bought all of his furniture, 
excepting bedding, silverware, and one cari)et. So everything 
is in complete order. Two pine tables, two sofas, carpets, 



lo William Walter Phelps 

tubs, kettles, pots, bakers, crockery, and everything you can 
think of. Rent $800.00. Now, I hope the Colonel will be 
satisfied. 

Now dear, shall I let Eno and his wife keep house until you 
come down or shall I keep house, or how shall we manage? 
I have possession the first of May. Perhaps you can come 
down about the tenth of May. However, I shall expect to 
see you before a great while. My shirt does not fit. The 
bosom comes up so high that the collar will button oz'er tny chin. 

I have no news yet from Simsbury. Have not seen Mr. or 
Mrs. High since I last wrote. 

I am in a hurry dear and must bid you good-by. 

Mr. Ely it seems abandoned Hartford for New York, 
as was suggested to him in the letter of his friend Phelps. 
He became a prosperous and leading citizen of the me- 
tropolis and for many years was well and favorably known 
in business and political circles, and as president of a 
prominent fire insurance company. One day in the 
latter part of his life, William Walter Phelps received 
from Mr. Ely a reminiscent communication concerning 
his old tenant. The letter contained a time-worn copy 
of an old lease and a small piece of silk. Here is what 
the letter said : 

Peter Cooper Fire Insurance Company, 
N. C. Ely. President. 

New York, 19 Jan'y, 1885. 
Hon. Wm. Walter Phelps, 

Dear Sir : 

I think you may have been born in this Third Street house. 
At all events you should be glad to know that your father (no 
more honorable man ever lived) of his o^cn free will gave my 
wife a very rich silk dress pattern, because one of his servants 
in stirring a coal fire with a long poker chipped a small piece 
from the under side of the marble mantle. 

I should never have discovered it in any probability, but 
your father did and gave the valuable silk dress pattern. I 
have a small piece saved with the rental agreement, which I 



His Life and Public Services ii 

have kept together for 47 years. I send them to you that you 
may continue to keep them together if you wish. 

Respectfully yours, 

N. C. Ely. 

It should be borne in mind that a silk dress in those 
days was of a great deal more importance and of far more 
value than now. 

When John Jay Phelps was in the height of his pros- 
perity as a merchant, tiiere was little trade for New York 
houses west of Ohio and Michigan, but this enterprising 
and sagacious man of affairs sought to push the business 
of his firm to the Mississippi, and while on one of his 
tours to extend his trade to the then far West, the letters 
he wrote to his wife contained much that was descriptive 
and interesting relating to the conditions in that new 
section of the country at that time, and one of them is 
here introduced. It is dated Burlington, Iowa, August 
22, 1841 : 

You would not get a line from me here, were it not that I 
am likely to be detained here for some little time unexpectedly. 
I wrote you last from Saint Louis. From there I took the 
steamboat up the Mississippi as far as the Illinois, and there 
up that river about 100 miles to a small town called Florance. 
The current of the Illinois river has hardly a perceptible move- 
ment. It is a dead sluggish mass of water. The banks are 
regularly overflowed and the waters set far back, where they 
remain until they are absorbed by evaporation. This renders 
the country in the neighborhood of the river unhealthy to a 
great degree. Indeed, every place we passed on the river was 
filled with fever. It was literally engraven upon the water, 
and on the shore. After doing my business at Florance, I 
started for Springfield, east of the Illinois river, when, after 
travelling 4 or 5 miles, my eye was gratified with the first sight 
of a prairie. Indeed the road to Springfield is literally through 
a succession of prairies: vast fields, sometimes 15 or 20 miles 
in extent, frequently with not a tree or shrub to relieve the 
eye in the whole distance — nothing save a rank growth of 



12 William Walter Phelps 

coarse grass intermingled with a species of plant bearing gaudy 
flowers, which grow some 5 or 6 feet in height. These prairies 
are bounded by small strips of timberland generally a mile or 
two in breadth, and frequently little islands of timber are seen 
in the centre of their vast solitudes. On the way to Spring- 
field is Jacksonville, a very pretty town, in which is a college. 

Springfield is to be the capital of the state, and is a flourish- 
ing place. This town, or rather city, as also Jacksonville, is 
situated on the edge of large prairies. From Jacksonville to 
Springfield I went in a one horse buggy, and on my return to 
Jacksonville I took stage to Quincy, crossed the Illinois river 
at a place called Naples. There had been four deaths the 
week before, tho' the place was almost deserted. I counted 
20 stores and shops vacated. There was not a well person at 
the tavern — the ferry man was sick, and all his people — and 
the driver rowed us across the river — and I can assure you I 
was glad to get away from a scene of such distress. We upset 
once in the stage and arrived at Quincy Thursday, p.m. Here 
I found many friends, and a first rate hotel. I stayed until 
Friday p.m. when I hired a man to take me to Blooming- 
ton, above here. We got along very well till within twenty 
miles of here, yesterday, when we found the late prodigious 
showers of rain had raised the rivers and creeks to such an 
extent that we could not possibly get our horse across. I 
got a horse-back ride to this place, where I shall probably 
have to stay a day or two, and perhaps more, waiting for 
a boat to go to Bloomington. From Bloomington I go to 
Chicago, when I shall consider myself almost home. 

I have been through some pretty tough scenes, but my 
health is good, and spirits ditto. 1 have not heard from you 
since I left Louisville and I am very anxious. Perhaps you 
will want to know what I think of Illinois. I should say 
about one half the state was richer in soil than any country I 
have seen; but I would not undertake to live on it for India's 
wealth. The other half is situated more high, soil good, and 
is extremely desirable as a residence. The first half is filled 
with flowers, and always will be. The other part is somewhat 
unhealthy but I tliink when the country becomes more im- 
proved it will be liealthy as most countries. 



His Life and Public Services 13 

Tell Ellen Papa thinks of her every day. She must be a 
good girl and learn to read before I return. Kiss the babies 
for me. 

The penmanship of these letters was firm and very 
plain and neat; there was not an erasure or interlineation 
in any one of them. They were in expression and ex- 
ecution characteristic of the man. No one could read 
them without feeling that the estimate of the character 
of the father by the son was correct, and that he was a 
man of generous emotions, under whose cold exterior 
beat the warmest of hearts. 

John Jay Phelps, after he became a man of wealth, 
built in 1852 a large and handsome house at the corner 
of Madison Avenue and Thirty-sixth Street ; the grounds 
attached to it extended along the avenue nearly a whole 
block. Although his prosperity led Mr. Phelps into no 
self-indulgences or wasteful habits of gratification, yet 
chiefly for those whom he cherished he created a home 
of luxury, refinement, and artistic taste. 

But all this did not keep the destroyer from the door. 
About the year 1865 it became too plainly foreshadowed 
that the dreaded malady consumption would surely and 
speedily shorten the great financier's life; yet to the last, 
as his strength gradually wasted away, he never became 
inactive. He lost no interest in his own affairs nor in the 
current events of the day. He was always cheerful and 
never once complained as the shadows darkened. It was 
in his last days that this "strong man armed " laid aside 
his armor, revealing to wife, children, and close friends 
the tender and loving nature of a most remarkable man. 

Surrounded by those whom he loved best, he died a 
true Christian May 12, 1869, at the age of fifty-eight. 
His funeral sermon was by the Rev. Dr. Stephen H. 
Tyng. in St. George's Episcopal Church. Mr. Phelps 
had built in the cemetery at Simsbury a spacious family 
vault, and therein his ashes repose. 



CHAPTER 11 

Early Life of William Walter Phelps — Enters Yale at Sixteen — Leaves 
College to Travel in Ireland for His Health — How He Acquired 
a Phenomenal Memory — Married on Evening of Graduation to 
Miss Ellen Maria Sheffield — The Sheffield Family — A Bridal Tour 
in Europe 

THE family of John Jay Phelps lived but a few years 
in the Third Street house, to which allusion has 
been made, but removed to a more spacious residence in 
Waverly Place, fronting Washington Square. At times 
the family spent the summer at Dundaff, and while at 
their temporary home in that place in 1839, William 
Walter Phelps was born. There was a younger son 
named Frank, but he lived only to the age of seven. A 
daughter, Ellen Ada, was born earlier. These were the 
only children of the family. 

It had been the continuous ambition of John Jay 
Phelps to become the founder of a family which should 
be not only one of permanent wealth, but of distinction in 
the world. After the death of the younger son it was 
natural that it should be impressed upon the mind of the 
elder, even in his youthful years, that it would be ex- 
pected of him to sustain the high social rank in which his 
family was moving and that the opportunities would be 
within his reach to add still greater lustre to the family 
name. 

Saratoga was at that time the summer resting-place of 
the most eminent and fashionable New York families. 
In his later life William Walter Phelps when visiting Sara- 
toga told how he used to be sent up to his family at the 

14 



His Life and Public Services 15 

beginning of the school vacation in the city, when he 
would meet the stately family carriage at Ballston, then 
the terminus of the railroad. There, with liveried coach- 
man and footman in their places, he would ride in the 
great coach alone, dashing through the town to his home. 
The next day he and other boys, barefooted and with 
trousers rolled up, would be splashing the water on each 
other and wading into the pond filled from Congress 
Spring. Congress Park was not then the elegant place 
it is now, for the spring and the grounds were in a quite 
primitive condition, and the flow from the spring made a 
large mud puddle, which was a favorite play spot for the 
village urchins. Mr. Phelps would laughingly relate this 
incident as an evidence of the levelling tendency of boy- 
hood fellowship and the natural democracy of mankind 
when unembarrassed by artificial conditions and social 
restraints. In his future intercourse with his fellow-men 
of all stations, Mr. Phelps conspicuously acted upon the 
belief that a man of high position, true greatness of char- 
acter, and real ability never added to his influence, dignity, 
and importance by keeping aloof from the common people. 
Mr. Phelps had his first school experience at Mount 
Washington Institute, New York, of which Rev. Dr. 
George W. Clark was principal, and where Roscoe Conk- 
ling was also a scholar. He is described by one who knew 
him well as a round-faced, rosy-cheeked boy, with spark- 
ling dark eyes. He was not physically very strong, but 
was active, and attracted notice by sprightliness. When 
at this school at the age of twelve, he made what may be 
called his first appearance in public. A Dr. Skinner, an 
enthusiast on the subject of the prevention of the drink- 
ing and sale of liquor, originated a device through which 
he thought he could get the youth of the city interested 
in the subject of prohibition. He oiTered a large prize to 
the pupil of any school who would write and deliver the 
best speech on that subject. The speeches were to be 
made by youths of sixteen or under, and a committee, of 



i6 William Walter Phelps 

which Rev. Dr. S. H. Tyng was chairman, received the 
manuscripts and selected from among them the fifteen 
believed to be most worthy. The writers delivered their 
speeches in the old Broadway Tabernacle, situated on 
Broadway below Canal Street, then a famous place for 
public gatherings of all kinds. Young Phelps, not thir- 
teen years of age, had the good fortune to be one of those 
selected. He was the youngest competitor, but delivered 
his address with a fluency and gracefulness that attracted 
especial attention and elicited rapturous applause, but 
perhaps his youth told against him, for the prize went to 
a young man from Manhattan College, greatly to the dis- 
appointment of a vast assemblage of people whose sym- 
pathies were intensely with the younger lad. 

Soon after this event William Walter was sent to the 
private school at Golden Hill, near Bridgeport, Connecti- 
cut. This institution was conducted by Rev. Henry 
Jones, whose wife was the daughter of Noah Webster, 
the distinguished lexicographer. His advancement in his 
studies was so rapid that when a little over fifteen he was 
fitted for college. But his health, which during his whole 
life was never robust, became somewhat impaired, and it 
was then deemed advisable to keep him away from his 
books for a time. Consequently, for a year he remained 
at home in New York engaged in the study of literature. 
In the meantime his father removed from Waverly Place 
to the Madison Avenue house on Murray Hill, which then 
was the largest private residence in the city. William 
Walter Phelps inherited it and it was his winter home for 
some years after he became a citizen of New Jersey, and 
it figured with some prominence in one or two episodes of 
his political days. 

The young man entered Yale College before he had 
reached his sixteenth year. Although the youngest of 
his class, he rose to the head of it. when the serious 
condition of his eyes again compelled him to forego his 
studies, and on the advice of an oculist he crossed the 



His Life and Public Services 17 

Atlantic, landing in Ireland. He arrived there during 
the high tide of emigration from that country to America. 
Much of the time he tramped around from village to vil- 
lage on foot and often at night found himself sitting at a 
peat fire in a cabin surrounded b)' a group of peasants, 
who listened most eagerly to the tales he told of the life 
and future before those who should seek a home in this 
country. His close intercourse with the Irish people of 
all classes during this tour created in his breast a warm and 
lasting sympathy for the Irish in all their political troubles. 

After spending nearly a year in travel without deriving 
any benefit to his eyes, young Phelps returned to Yale 
College determined at all hazards to pursue his studies, 
and employed another student to read everything to him. 
He had to give his undivided attention to the readings, 
and through this practice, it is believed, was developed 
that phenomenal memory that was so notable in his after- 
life, when he seldom forgot an incident or the most care- 
less remark. But with all this disadvantage he was 
enabled to keep up with his class, and at the end of four 
years graduated with honor. One who knew him well in 
those days, and ever after, said of him: "At college his 
great ambition was to stand high. He was never a lazy 
student, and study was never onerous. He was rather 
more proficient in the classics than mathematics, but was 
no mean scholar in the mathematical branches. He did 
not at any time live in the college building, but was well 
known and popular among all the college boys, and his 
ever genial disposition and easy politeness made him a 
favorite among his classmates." 

Among his classmates, who until the close of Mr, Phelps's 
life maintained the closest friendship and intimacy with 
him, was one who is now a prominent clergj^man in a 
flourishing city. This old classmate, and no one knew 
more of Mr. Phelps as a collegian, in recalling the college 
days of his loving friend, since the latter's death, made 
these feeling remarks : 



i8 William Walter Phelps 

He was most studious and systematic in his hours for study, 
yet he acquired so easily, and had such an exceptionally re- 
tentive memory that apparently without excessive effort and 
certainly without "digging" and "grubbing" he won and 
maintained a place in the first rank of scholarship. He had 
come to college from a small preparatory school of a limited 
local reputation. At once he entered into successful compe- 
tition with the best accredited scholars from the largest schools. 
Had his eyesight not failed him, necessitating his absence from 
college and an entire cessation of all study for a year and the 
consequent entrance into the next class for graduation he 
would no doubt probably have carried off the honors of the 
valedictorian. The scholarly instinct was very strong in him. 
He was especially proficient in the languages, finding much 
pleasure in the study of the Greek and Latin classics. He 
was a ready debater, a fluent speaker and his essays and 
literary productions were of a very high order. 

It was very remarkable that this high standing in scholarship 
and excellence in general literary work should have been gained 
with such comparative ease, for he had abundant leisure for 
social pursuits and the amenities of life, evidenced by the fact 
that he was married in the evening of his graduation, an occa- 
sion to which all his class men were invited. 

It was a serious question witli liim upon leaving college 
whether or not to devote some time at least to teaching with 
the view of possibly making that his life work, he was so thor- 
oughly in love with study and with the student life. The 
position of tutor in the college was offered to him with the 
understanding that a professor's chair would in time be pro- 
vided for him. It was with reluctance that he finally turned 
aside from this attractive pursuit to the study of the law. 

In his college days there was the bright promise of what his 
future would be as to the social side of his character. He had 
a genius for friendship. The spirit of comradeship was born 
in him and college life gave ample opportunity for its manifes- 
tation and exercise. The warm friendsliips he then made he 
cherished to the end of his life, counting them the most pre- 
cious of all his possessions. 

Athletics did not then occupy so much of the thought and 



His Life and Public Services 19 

time of college students. This is quite a modern development 
— the wide and intense interest in college athletics. But he 
never had the physical robustness to permit of any very vio- 
lent exercise. He was fond of horse-back riding, always kept 
in New Haven a fine spirited saddle horse, and made good 
use of it both for recreation and health. 

Such was his prominence as a scholar and such his character 
as an all-round Christian gentleman, that he was chosen as one 
of the fifteen of his class for the Senior Society of Skull and 
Bones, an honor recognized by his own class beyond all dis- 
pute as most richly merited. This society had then and since 
among its members many of the most eminent men of the 
country. His theme, one of the most notable essays, was this 
— which accords with the spirit of his college life and whole 
life — "Work for Work's sake — the joy and pleasure work 
brings." And this though a large fortune was awaiting him. 

At the graduating examination Mr. Phelps was passed 
by John M. Morris, who got the valedictory, and Mr. 
Phelps took the second place and was the salutatorian. 
There was a story that he lost the prize on the last day 
on a written examination in Butler's Analogy. He neg- 
lected to write out a paper which would have required 
three or four hours' work, choosing to run the risk of 
a failure rather than lose a drive with the young lady 
to whom he was engaged. But he had the satisfaction, 
however, of having carried off many of the principal 
prizes of the college, some of which were : the Town- 
send premium; Bishop Barkley's prize for Latin com- 
position; first prize for English composition; first prize 
for debate. 

On the evening of his graduation Mr. Phelps was mar- 
ried to Ellen Maria, the daughter of Mr. Joseph Earle 
Sheffield of New Haven, the generous founder of the 
renowned Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College. 
The wedding was attended by all the classmates, and its 
pleasures and joyfulness were often recalled by the grad- 
uates for many years after. 



20 William Walter Phelps 

The Sheffield family was an old and distingruished one 
in New England, and more particularly in Connecticut, 
and the father of Mrs. William Walter Phelps was a man 
whose memory will not for ages die out in this country, 
and none deserves more enduring fame. He was born in 
Southport, Connecticut, June 19, 1793. His father and 
grandfather were extensive shipowners, and took an active 
part in the War of the Revolution in a vessel commissioned 
by Congress, but equipped and sailed by themselves. 
His early education was obtained in the common schools, 
which he left in 1808, when hardly fifteen years of age, to 
become a clerk to Stephen Fowler of Newberne, North 
Carolina. In 181 3 he formed a partnership with a house 
in New York, residing himself in Newberne and attending 
to the business in that city. He soon became one of the 
largest shippers of cotton in the country. He returned 
to Connecticut in the summer of 1835, and established 
himself in New Haven, which place was ever after his 
home. He was one of the chief projectors of the railroad 
between New Haven and New York, and was the founder 
of the New Haven and Northampton Railway Company, 
of which he was for many years president. In 1851 Mr. 
Sheffield engaged with a partner, Mr. Farnum, in the 
construction of the Rock Island Railroad, the beginning 
of what is now known as the Chicago, Rock Island and 
Pacific Railroad. Within two years after the signing of 
the contract, and one year short of the time allowed, the 
road was finished at an expense of over §5,cxx).ooo. By 
the terms of the contract Mr. Sheffield and Mr. Farnum 
secured by the early completion of the road the right to 
control it up to a specified date, and to receive all its 
earnings. The result was found exceedingly profitable, 
as the earnings of the road were large, and Mr. Sheffield's 
ample fortune was considerably increased. After this he 
visited Europe, remaining two years, and after his return 
he continued as long as he lived an active business life, 
giving constantly his personal superintendence to the 



His Life and Public Services 21 

various great enterprises with which he was connected. 
Mr. Sheffield was prominent in banking circles, being 
identified with a leading bank in New Haven and hold- 
ing a large amount of stock in banks in New York 
City. 

Mr. Sheffield was always a man noted for his noble- 
hearted charities to the needy, but is best known through 
his spontaneous and enormous benefactions to educational 
institutions. In 1846 he began the work of establishing 
the Scientific School which bears his name, and which is 
a lasting monument of his philanthropy and virtues. He 
also made large donations to Trinity College, Hartford, 
and to the Theological Seminary of the Northwest, in 
Chicago. From the foundation of the Scientific School 
up to the time of his decease his donations to that institu- 
tion were continuous according to its development and 
needs, and, in his will he left to it one seventh of his large 
estate. 

Miss Sheffield was reared in a home of wealth and cul- 
ture and although young in years when married, she had 
seen much of society, and consequently was well fitted, 
as the wife of William Walter Phelps, to become, as she 
did in time, the gentle and kind-hearted mistress of the 
far-famed Phelps homestead at Teaneck. Here were 
brought up her three children, two sons and a daughter. 
Over the extensive hospitalities of her home Mrs. Phelps 
presided, wnth an amiability and cordiality which at once 
put all guests at perfect ease. She inherited the bene- 
ficent traits of her father, but her many quiet charities 
were known to few save the recipients. Every employee 
at Teaneck in sickness or distress ahvays received 
promptly from its mistress warm-hearted sympathy and 
■generous help. 

Shortly after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Phelps sailed 
for Europe. They were absent more than a year, spend- 
ing a large portion of the time in Germany. It was while 
on this tour that Mr. Phelps acquired much of that 



2 2 William Walter Phelps 

knowledge of the German language, society, institutions, 
and government which subsequently enabled him, while 
in an official capacity, so readily to familiarize himself 
with the conditions in that country and to become at 
once ver>'' much liked by its rulers and people. 



CHAPTER III 

Studies Law at Columbia — His First Jury Case — A Successful Lawyer — 
Some of His Largest Cases — Declines a Seat on the New York 
Bench and Settles in New Jersey 

ON his return to New York Mr. Phelps entered the 
Columbia Law School. Here he must have been 
a most painstaking and diligent student. Records left by 
him show that he made full notes of the lectures and read 
the text-books with great care and thoughtfulness. Be- 
sides, he read closely all of the current decisions of the 
appellate courts with comments upon them, and he 
watched and made memoranda of all the important trials 
that were taking place in the courts at that date. Before 
he was admitted to practice he had a law office, an ample 
law library, and was acquiring quite a large legal business. 
He was giving particular attention to commercial law, as 
he was expecting to make a specialty of that branch of 
legal practice. 

In the meantime he and Mrs. Phelps were living happily 
with his father at the Murray Hill home on Madison 
Avenue. On the first day of January, 1862, he made this 
entry in his diary : 

A rainy, cloudy day. I started later than usual to make my 
calls. Of course alone. I made about the usual list. The 
day was not generally celebrated as in past years. Mourning 
in many for lost friends or property in these days of war cloud 
closed many hospitable doors that were wont to be open to 
graceful hospitality. It became windy and dark by the time 
I reached the Hill on my return, so I lost heart to further 

23 



24 William Walter Phelps 

continue my visits and came home to rest. Our presents were 
very acceptable. We found them ranged by our plates at the 
breakfast table, and had a merry time inspecting the gifts of 
each. What hard work it is to gather these little memorials: 
there are so many pretty objects to choose among and so many 
different tastes. But procrastination in this as in everything 
else is the fruitful source of perplexity. If one only started 
in season he might by gradual acquisition through the autumn 
create and complete a circle of gifts that would satisfy him- 
self and friends without one half the bother of the after Christ- 
mas searching. 

In January, 1862, Horatio Seymour was inaugurated 
as Governor of the State of New York and Mr. Phelps, 
already on the alert for business advantages, wrote the 
Governor a letter which read : 

I beg leave to suggest my name to his Excellency in any 
nominations he may hereafter make to the office of notary 
public for the City and County of New York. Aware that the 
legislature has limited the number of these offices, I should 
deem myself under greater obligations did your Excellency see 
fit to send my name to the Senate. 

This is among the first records of Mr. Phelps's business 
career, and it affords an apt illustration of the remarkably 
concise style that was so easily at his command in all his 
correspondence. A young man, however, he fell into the 
common error of conferring upon governors and high 
officials in this country the title of " Excellency." a usage 
that he soon learned most carefully to avoid. It is prob- 
able that his request was not granted by the Governor. 
But it is worthy of mention that this small office was the 
only public appointment ever solicited by a man who 
afterward had bestowed upon him so many high official 
positions. 

As might be expected, Mr. Phelps was graduated with 
the highest honors in the class of 1863, and delivered 
the valedictory at the Law Commencement. He at once 



His Life and Public Services 25 

began practice as a full-fledged lawyer at his office in 
Exchange Place. An amusing story was published in 
the newspapers descriptive of his first jury trial. It was 
as follows : 

The client of the young lawyer was a young woman who 
claimed that the landlord of a house in which she had lodged 
had called after her one night as she entered her room, " There 
goes a thief." The defendant denied the accusation and wit- 
ness after witness was produced, till the Court refused to listen 
to another, all testifying positively that they had heard every- 
thing, and nothing of the kind was said. The case looked 
desperate, the young woman's attorney had nothing but his 
single interested witness to prove his side of the case. The 
opposing attorney, with an assumption of indignation at the 
evident untruthfulness of the plaintiff, grew exceedingly sharp 
in his cross-examination, and plied question after question, 
until, overstepping the bounds of common decency, he was 
interrupted by Mr. Phelps, who, with the conventional anger 
of a practised barrister, called on the Court to protect his 
client. With conventional indifference the Judge refused and 
allowed the defendant's attorney to continue, until the plaintiff 
burst into tears and Mr. Phelps's indignation grew speechless. 
The case was closed, and in one sentence the Judge charged 
that there was really no evidence on the side of the prosecu- 
tion. The jury went out and Mr. Phelps sat down expecting 
nothing after the charge of the Judge but a verdict for the de- 
fendant. But very much to his surprise the jury in a very few 
moments returned and rendered a verdict of fifty dollars dam- 
ages to the plaintiff. The Judge in indignation immediately 
ordered the court to be adjourned. Mr. Phelps while gather- 
ing up his papers was approached by the foreman, who said: 
" We did n't believe he called her a thief, and we did n't be- 
lieve that you expected any damages, but you were so good- 
natured that we thought we would give you damages enough 
to make the costs." 

This ended his first experience on his first jury trial, 
and it is said that he never failed to get a verdict from a 
jury in any case that he ever tried. 



26 William Walter Phelps 

Very few of those who knew him in his later days arc 
aware of his close application to his profession in the be- 
ginning of his legal practice. He would day after day- 
take a late dinner at the English Chop House on Pine 
Street, west of Broadway, known as "Old Tom's," the 
resort of merchants, brokers, and lawyers in those years, 
and then go back to his office down town and work until 
late in the evening. The result of this yielding so wholly 
to the demands of his profession was that at the age of 
twenty-five he found himself in the possession of a large 
office in which he employed several assistants and had all 
the business to which he could well give attention. He 
was counsel for Moses Taylor, George Bliss, Marshall O. 
Roberts, Amos R. Eno, and many corporations of which 
he afterwards became a manager, including the United 
States Trust Company. He, about this time, took part 
in a litigation which gained for him much reputation. It 
was connected with the failure of the firm of Morris, 
Ketchum & Co., the great government bankers in the 
early part of the Civil War. The son of the senior 
partner had fled, taking with him nearly all of the securi- 
ties that were lodged with the firm by its customers. He 
was subsequently arrested and brought to trial. Mr, 
Phelps was the leading counsel for the defence and made 
a plea for the criminal which attracted great attention 
and favorable public comment. The questions involved 
in this litigation were intricate and vigorously contested. 
For one argument, which was reported verbatim in the 
daily journals, Mr. Phelps received a fee of $io,cxDO. 

Connected with his legal work at this period was a pro- 
ceeding that Mr. Phelps always looked back to with great 
pride and satisfaction as one of the most creditable o{ his 
early triumphs. It was a contest by his sister's father-in- 
law, William E. Dodge, against James Brooks, Sr., for a 
seat in the national House of Representatives. The 
election was in 1864, when the conditions growing out of 
the Civil War were at their worst, and the Democratic 



His Life and Public Services 27 

National Convention of that year had denounced the war 
for the restoration of the Union a "failure." New York 
City was the stronghold in the North of all those who 
sympathized with the South and opposed the war policy 
of the national administration. Mr. Lincohi had been 
nominated for re-election, and in the Eighth Congressional 
District of New York City a candidate was sought who 
could rally to his support all the Union voters of whatever 
party, and the leaders selected William E. Dodge. He 
was a prominent merchant, of the most exalted character, 
unquestioned ability, and fervent patriotism. He was 
enlightened on all the issues of the day, and withal a good 
public speaker. His Democratic opponent was Mr. James 
Brooks, who had already held the seat for three terms and 
was the recognized Democratic leader in Congress, where 
he was the champion of the "rights of the South." He 
was also editor of a New York daily newspaper, and was 
skilled in all the tactics of New York Democratic politics. 
The nomination of Mr. Dodge was made but a few days 
before the election. He accepted with reluctance, as he 
had little taste for ofBcial life, but yielded in this instance 
to a sense of duty. The leading citizens residing in his 
district supported him with vigor and the patriotic voters 
rallied at the polls with enthusiasm. The total vote of 
the district was twenty-two thousand and the returns to 
the police headquarters on the night of the election gave 
Mr. Dodge a plurality of more than seven hundred votes. 
The reports of the Associated Press elected Mr. Brooks 
by about one hundred and fifty, the Democrats having 
control of the canvassing of the votes and of the election 
machinery. Mr. Brooks was given the certificate of elec- 
tion. The irregularities at the polls were well known, and 
it was evident that there had been fraud in the count and 
juggling of the returns. Those who had supported Mr. 
Dodge and the Republicans throughout the country 
urged him to contest the election and he finally con- 
sented. He selected for his attorney William Walter 



28 William Walter Phelps 

Phelps, who put all of his energies into the management 
of the case. He collected testimony with great industry, 
arranging it and presenting it to the court in the most tell- 
ing shape. Those who were present at the court where the 
testimony was taken pronounced his cross-examination 
of opposing witnesses as exceedingly shrewd and tactful. 

The evidence on the part of Mr. Dodge filled a volume 
of over five hundred pages, and it proved conclusively a 
conspiracy to secure by any means the return of the 
Democratic nominee, and showed beyond all reasonable 
doubt fraudulent registration, illegal voting, false returns, 
violations of the election law by the election officers, as 
well as bribery of voters and corruption without stint. 
The taking of the testimony occupied six weeks, and at 
the opening of Congress in December, 1865, the papers 
were presented and the case referred to the Committee 
on Elections. Mr. Brooks as a sitting member had the 
advantage in the privilege of being present at all the dis- 
cussions. He was a plausible talker, was skilled in the 
use of parliamentary expedients and familiar with all the 
devices to delay action on any proceedings. He had 
been the Democratic candidate for Speaker of that Con- 
gress, and was very popular with his party, who stood by 
him to a man. He formulated numerous charges against 
his opponent, his case occupying nine hundred pages of 
printed matter. The delays were vexatious, but the com- 
mittee finally made its report, finding that Mr. Brooks 
had not proven any of his charges against the contestant 
and that the latter was entitled to the disputed seat, and 
the House, on April 6, 1866, passed a resolution seating 
Mr. Dodge, who was immediately sworn in. The leading 
incidents of this contest have been derived from the 
Memorial of William E. Dodge, compiled by his son, 
Rev. Dr. I). Stuart Dodge. 

At this time Reuben E. Fenton had become Governor 
of the State of New York. He had heard of the rising 
young lawyer in the city and an intimate and lasting ac- 



His Life and Public Services 29 

quaintance grew up between them. The Governor ten- 
dered to Mr. Phelps a seat on the bench, but the offer, 
flattering as it was, Mr. Phelps declined, as its acceptance 
would interfere with other projects he had in mind regard- 
ing his future. He had never liked the city as a place of 
residence. He began to look for a rural home, and much 
persuasion was used by friends and acquaintances to 
have him settle in their respective localities, and even 
very promising inducements were held out to him by 
those whom he had met to "go West." He finally fixed 
upon a place in Bergen County, New Jersey, for a sum- 
mer home, expecting to live during the winter season in 
the city so long, at least, as his father should live. The 
property he selected and purchased was a farm of moder- 
ate size on which there was an old-fashioned Dutch farm- 
house. It was situated at what was called Teaneck Ridge, 
on the highway leading from Englewood to Hackensack, 
about two miles from the first-named village, and a little 
more distant from Hackensack, the county seat. It was 
the "Old Garrit Brinkerhoff Homestead" of Revolution- 
ary days. Mr. Phelps began making additions to the 
house for the comfort and convenience of the family, 
keeping up strictly the old Dutch style of architecture. 
It was his intention at first to erect at his convenience a 
handsome mansion of the modern style, but the birth of 
his daughter, Marian, which took place at the old farm- 
house, so endeared it to the hearts of himself and Mrs, 
Phelps that he determined that it should stand and to 
transform it into a most picturesque cottage. His efforts 
were successful, and the old farm building became thence- 
forth widely known as Teaneck Grange. A more detailed 
description of this structure when finished will be given 
farther on in this book. Adjacent farms were bought 
year after year, until the original purchase was obscured 
by the broad estate that grew around it, reaching from 
the Hackensack to the Hudson, a distance of nearly five 
miles, and embracing quite two thousand acres. 



30 William Walter Phelps 

In the years following Mr. Phelps's location of Tea- 
neck, he gave to the development of his country estate, 
and particularly to road improvement in that vicinity, all 
the time he could spare from his busy law office in the 
city. He had a great and natural love for acreage and 
would look with the pride of ownership over the fair lands 
of his home so far as sight carried — lands that had be- 
longed to others in past generations, but now were his to 
improve and beautify. The wide and rolling fields, the 
vivid green of the meadows, the blue range of the Palis- 
ades beyond, and the cottages of his dependants half 
hidden by the trees, all delighted him, and love for this 
rural abode increased with every year. 



CHAPTER IV 

His Large Business Interests Compel Him to Give up His Law Practice — 
Builds Railroads and Acquires Land in Texas — Enters New Jersey 
Politics and Becomes a "Favorite Son" — Famous Paramus Con- 
vention — Elected to Congress 

MR. PHELPS'S father died in 1869 and bequeathed 
to his son a very large property just at a time when 
the latter was reaching to the highest prizes of his pro- 
fession. The cares incident upon the management of 
his inherited estate and the unavoidable assumption of 
weighty responsibilities for others demanded so much 
of his time and strength that very shortly he was com- 
pelled to withdraw regretfully from active practice at the 
bar and give his whole attention to his private affairs. 

About this time also he began to feel strongly the at- 
tractions of public life and to realize the possibilities of 
the service and distinction which politics offered to a man 
of his capabilities and position. These were the stormy 
days of the Reconstructive period. Mr. Phelps from the 
start was conscientiously a Republican ; the patriotism 
and intense Americanism of that party strongly attracted 
him. He believed most sincerely that upon the policy 
of the Republican party depended financial stability, mer- 
cantile and industrial prosperity, and all that labor had to 
hope for in the equalization of the human lot and cor- 
recting the apparent injustice of nature. He observed 
that the Republican party usually consulted the conserv- 
ative yet progressive public sentiment without veering 
to the gale of popular clamor, while in his view the 

31 



32 William Walter Phelps 

opposite party was apt to change its attitude and policy 
at every election. 

He became a legal resident of New Jersey in 1867, and 
took an interest in all the public affairs of his own and 
neighboring localities, forming many feasible plans for 
improvements. His genial disposition and sprightly man- 
ners made him quickly acquainted with the people of all 
kinds. In going to and fro on the New York trains he 
met a high class of business men living in Englewood and 
all along the Northern Railroad valley, and it was not 
long before his name became a familiar one throughout 
Bergen County. Numbered among his new friends were 
many of the Republican leaders of Bergen County, who 
caught the idea that he would be a good and available 
man to be brought into political prominence, and they 
laid their plans accordingly. 

Until this time Mr. Phelps had taken only a modest part 
in a few local political gatherings, but began to be spoken 
of as the "rising young man from Bergen County." His 
first real entrance into the politics of New Jersey, in 
which he was destined in future to play so prominent a 
part, was when he was sent as a delegate to the conven- 
tion of the Fourth Congressional District of the State, 
held at Paterson in the autumn of 1870. The district at 
that time included Bergen, Passaic, Morris, and Sussex 
counties, and the townships which were called "the 
Oranges," in Essex County. It was the design of Mr. 
Phelps's friends here to introduce him to the district by 
making him the permanent presiding officer of the con- 
vention. There were difficulties in carrying out this plan, 
as the convention was a large one and there were others 
ambitious for the position. The Bergen candidate, with 
the exception of a small body of ardent admirers from 
Sussex, was not largely known outside of his own county. 
But the Committee on Organization reported Mr. Phelps's 
name and on taking the chair he delivered an address 
which was a surprise to all on account of its inspiriting 



His Life and Public Services 33 

eloquence and thorough exposition of the issues that 
were foremost in the campaign of that year. John Hill, 
of Morris County, a man of the highest personal and 
political integrity and standing, had held the seat from 
that district for two terms and seemed to be booked by 
the party managers for another nomination. But Mr. 
Phelps's speech had aroused for him so much enthusiasm 
and popular applause that a strong inclination arose on 
the part of many delegates to put his name before the 
convention for the nomination. This Mr. Phelps would 
not permit, but there was a reported understanding 
among various party leaders from the district that the 
Bergen County man should be the next candidate without 
opposition from Mr. Mill or his friends. At this conven- 
tion, too, he made the acquaintance of several active and 
influential men of his party, who remained ever after his 
warm personal friends and safe political advisers. Mr. 
Hill was elected after a close contest. Mr. Phelps gave 
valuable aid to the Republican cause in this campaign 
and at its close had become well known and had gained 
unlimited popularity throughout the district. 

Mr. Phelps's slight dip into the bubbling political caul- 
dron did not divert him from legitimate business enter- 
prises. In 1870, with several other New York capitalists 
and financiers, he became interested in the development 
of railroads in Texas. At that time the State of Texas 
had few if any railroads, little money, a doubtful credit, 
and a great deal of land. One or two enterprising citi- 
zens of the State had secured from the legislature soon 
after the Civil War immense grants of land for building 
certain specified railroads. There was also provided in 
the legislative grants a subsidy per mile to be paid in 
money. The roads with their branches were to extend 
through the most populous sections of the State, con- 
necting the chief cities — one of them to connect in the 
northern part of the State with a line running south 
from St. Louis. A misunderstanding arose between the 



34 William Walter Phelps 

original projectors and the State officials as to the terms 
of payment of the subsidies, and the builders of the road 
were unable to carry on the work. It was then that the 
aid of Northern capital was sought, and Mr. Phelps and 
others, including Moses Taylor, William E. Dodge, and 
John J. Cisco, were induced to advance capital to carry 
on these enterprises, taking in security land, stocks, and 
mortgage bonds. With this financial aid the railroads in 
question were finished, and the companies were consoli- 
dated into one, which is now known as the International 
and Great Northern Railroad Company. But further 
complications ensued with the State, partially through 
antagonisms of its ofificials, and also through adverse acts 
of the legislature, which repudiated obligations created 
by previous legislatures. This enmity and bad faith dis- 
played toward those whose money had built the roads 
existed despite the fact that the people, and especially 
the agriculturists of the vast sections which the roads 
opened up, were immensely benefited and the value of 
their property enormously increased. The road was 
forced into the hands of a receiver and sold, becoming a 
part of the Gould system, which now extends from St. 
Louis to the City of Mexico. Mr. Phelps in the settle- 
ment of affairs exchanged his large holding of second- 
mortgage bonds for the lands which had been granted to 
the company in the Pan-Handle and W^estern part of the 
State. Thus was acquired by Mr. Phelps and some of 
his associates three millions or more of acres of land, then 
of no great cash value. In 1880 Mr. Phelps was chiefly 
instrumental in organizing the New York and Texas Land 
Company, of which he was the largest stockholder. His 
interest in this company, what was thought at one time 
to be a doubtful financial venture, resulted in creating a 
very valuable asset of his estate. He always had an 
abiding confidence in the ultimate profitableness of real- 
estate holdings, and this acquisition of Texas acres, and 
holding them so tenaciousl)- in his grasp all through the 



His Life and Public Services 35 

hard panic times of 1874 is a striking instance of his busi- 
ness prudence and foresight. 

In 187J there was an election for President. General 
Grant was a candidate for re-election, and a new Congress 
was to be chosen. The census of 1870 had made neces- 
sary a Congressional re-districting, therefore a new district 
in New Jersey, designated as the Fifth was created, com- 
prising the counties of Bergen, Morris, and Passaic. It 
had been known for two years that Mr. Phelps would this 
time be brought forward by his admirers and friends for 
the Republican nomination. There was opposition, for 
Mr. Hill was desirous of still further service. He had 
supporters in Morris and Passaic counties, who denied 
any knowledge of an understanding two years previously 
that Mr. Hill should step aside at this election for the 
Bergen County favorite. Nor in Bergen was the field 
quite clear. Some of the old party leaders there thought 
that Mr. Phelps was too new a man in the county 
to entitle him to a nomination for so important an 
ofifice, while others raised the objection that he was 
too young. There were other prominent citizens of 
that county who aspired to a seat in Congress and 
placed themselves in opposition to the young lawyer. 
One was General Thomas B. Van Buren, who had mar- 
ried a sister of Mrs. Phelps, and who had become a 
resident of Teaneck. He was a man of impressive per- 
sonal appearance, great ambition, and an effective public 
speaker. He was later United States Commissioner to 
the Vienna Exposition, and for many years Consul- 
General at Yokohama, Japan. The other opponent to 
Mr. Phelps was Charles H. Voorhis, a talented lawyer, 
practising in Hackensack. He was from an old Bergen 
County family of large connections, and was well known 
in every section of the county, a sarcastic talker, and a 
very keen politician. Spirited and persevering efforts 
were made by each of the contestants to secure delegates 
from Bergen County. It was then the custom in that 



36 William Walter Phelps 

county for the Republicans to select delegates to nomi- 
nating bodies through a mass convention of the party 
called to meet at some designated place. The voters 
thus assembling from the respective townships there 
conferred together, and after making their selection of 
delegates, reported them to the mass convention. This 
practice resulted in 1S72 in one of the most memorable 
political gatherings ever held in the county and has come 
down in local history as the "famous Paramus Conven- 
tion." It was called at Union Hall, Paramus, a some- 
what inaccessible spot. It was a pleasant, mellow, 
September afternoon. There came crowds on foot, and 
adherents of the rival candidates arrived from all parts 
of the county in carriages, express wagons, furniture 
carts, and other vehicles, some of which were decorated 
with flags. On the ground the excitement was intense. 
The convention, after going through the formalities of 
organization in the hall, adjourned for an hour to give 
the various townships time to select their delegates. 
Forthwith there was a great rush out-of-doors and shouts 
of "Saddle River this way," " Englewood under the 
apple tree," " Lodi on the left," "Union here by the 
fence," "Ridgefield along the road," and so on through 
all the townships — there were only twelve at that time 
and no boroughs. The late Judge William S. Banta of 
Hackensack stood on the tail end of a farm wagon taking 
votes, using his hat as a ballot box. It was soon evident 
that Mr. Phelps's partisans were not only more numerous, 
but better organized. Ridgefield township, which in- 
cluded Fort Lee, had over three hundred representatives, 
and among these was a spirited opposition to Mr. Phelps, 
inspired by a strong local leader who wished to head a 
delegation of his own followers. The Phelps voters were 
arrayed on one side of the road, their antagonists directly 
opposite. There was an exciting time and as a result 
contesting delegates presented themselves to the conven- 
tion, and a tumult ensued. The delegates from Ridge- 



His Life and Public Services 37 

field favoring Mr. Plielps were admitted by an over- 
whelming vote, which assured him all the delegates to 
the Congressional convention except four who were 
claimed by Mr. Voorhis. General Van Buren had with- 
drawn his name in the early part of the proceedings. 

Space has been given to this convention because it was 
there that Mr. Phelps had his first real experience in 
partisan strife, and there also was made sensible, as never 
before, of that misrepresentation and calumny which, it 
is sad to say, but few who are named for political posi- 
tions ever escape, however pure their motive or upright 
their conduct. It is worthy of note that the most ardent 
champions of Mr. Phelps at this outset of his political 
career were young men whose energy and enthusiasm 
contributed largely to his success, and subsequently in 
all his political contests he could rally around him the 
younger voters of his party, toward whom in turn he was 
always ready to extend a helping hand. 

Mr. Hill's friends made a vigorous effort for him in 
Passaic County and elected a majority of the delegates, 
but at the preliminary proceedings of the convention his 
own county of Morris did not stand by him with any- 
thing like unanimity, consequently he withdrew from the 
contest. Mr. Voorhis, on the contrary, kept up the fight 
and sought to bring to his side the delegates chosen for 
Mr. Hill. The effort was fruitless, for when the vote 
was taken in the convention Mr. Phelps was the choice of 
each of the three counties, the total vote being seventy- 
three to thirty-two, the announcement of which was re- 
ceived with much popular applause. The nominee was 
brought before the convention and accepted the nomina- 
tion in a brief speech during which he alluded in compli- 
mentary terms to Mr. Hill, and expressed his thanks for 
the honor which had been done him and Bergen County. 
He dwelt upon the general issues of the campaign and 
indicated his own course should he be elected, assuring 
his hearers that he should always be found faithful to the 



3^ William Walter Phelps 

Republican party and its principles. He had never been 
anything but a Republican, and he hoped to die a Re- 
publican, for the Republican party would live so long as 
there remained a governmental wrong to be righted. 

Having been once launched on the troublous sea of 
political candidacy, Mr. Phelps threw himself heart and 
soul into the campaign. He spoke at mass meetings in 
all the counties of the district and attended the Ipcal con- 
ventions, which gave him an opportunity to come in 
direct contact with the active men of the party. He was 
heartily received by the German organizations and ad- 
dressed the members of the French Club at Paterson in 
their own tongue. As an undeniably rich man he was a 
most conspicuous object of attack by the Democratic 
journals of demagogic tendencies. His private character 
was conceded to be irreproachable, but he was charged 
with almost everything else likely to militate against one 
who is solicitating popular suffrage. His neatness and 
peculiarities of dress caused him to be held up as a dude. 
It was said that he was an interloper and a carpet-bagger, 
and, although he was a large property holder and tax- 
payer, it was contended that he was really a New Yorker 
who had no interest in the people or industries of the dis- 
trict, and an aristocrat too proud to mingle with the com- 
mon people. ]^ut the voters as they became acquainted 
with the Republican candidate soon found out what was 
the fact, that he was a man of true democratic sentiments, 
who never paraded his wealth in his associations with his 
fellow-men and that unstudied politeness and urbanity 
were invariably shown to all — high and low, rich and poor. 

The Democratic candidate was Col. Absalom B. Wood- 
ruff, a well-known lawyer and afterwards judge, who up 
to this time had been a Republican, but for some reason 
had suddenly gone over to the other side, where he was 
welcomed by a Congressional nomination. He was not 
a polished or eloquent speaker, but he talked fluently, 
and in a controversy had a habit of selecting a few prom- 



His Life and Public Services 39 

inent points on his side and then testing their utmost 
malleability, a style that he found very taking with many 
of his auditors. One of his constant iterations during the 
campaign was that his opponent was not a resident of the 
State. Mr. Phelps in those years lived for a few weeks 
each winter in his New York house, and for this reason 
his name was recorded in the directory of the city long 
after he became a citizen of New Jersey. Colonel Wood- 
ruff, in taking full advantage of this fact, at a large mass 
meeting had piled up at his side ten huge New York 
directories dating from 1863 to 1872, and taking them up 
one after the other read amid bursts of laughter from his 
audience: "Phelps, W. W., lawyer, 26 Exchange Place, 
house, 219 Madison Avenue." 

Colonel Woodruff had also the support of a political 
faction known as "Liberal Republicans," which through 
dissatisfaction with General Grant's administration had 
split from the Republican party and joined with the 
Democrats in trying to elect Mr. Greeley for President. 

Few men who ever had the good or bad fortune to be 
the nominee of a political party were more mercilessly 
vilified than was Mr. Phelps in this struggle. Stories 
were published that he was an oppressive employer, pay- 
ing the numerous workmen on his estate the most nig- 
gardly wages, and treating them like serfs. Emissaries 
were sent from Paterson to induce those in his employ 
to tell a tale of woe that could be used for political efTect. 
These envoys came back with the story that all they 
could get was the united testimony of these workmen 
that their wages were satisfactory and that Mr. Phelps 
was the kindest and most considerate of employers, treat- 
ing all in his service in such a manner that they were 
always glad to do anything to please him. 

The long and harassing canvass came at last to an end, 
and Mr. Phelps's reward for all that he had gone through 
was the gratifying vote of the district; Mr. Phelps, 12,- 
701 ; Woodruff, 8986. 



CHAPTER V 

Takes His Seat in the Forty-third Congress— A Personal Description- 
James G. Blaine Becomes His Friend— Comes Quickly to the Front 
as a Parliamentary Orator and Debater — Denounces the Famous 
"Salary Grab" — Energetic Speech Against the Franking Privilege 
Abuses— A Parliamentary Tilt with a Kansas Granger 

WHEN Mr. Phelps, in December, 1873, started for 
Washington to begin his work in Congress he 
was accompanied to the railroad station in Jersey City by 
his intimate personal friend, Charles Nordhoff of the New 
York Evoiing Post, who there introduced him to the 
veteran Representative from Vermont, Judge Lake A. 
Poland, with a request that the latter should take the 
young member under his wing and see him safely over 
the first stages of his strange life. The charge was cheer- 
fully accepted, and accompanying his venerable protec- 
tor, Mr. Phelps soon found himself seated in a parlor car 
flying towards Washington. The youthful member was 
naturally anxious to make a good impression on the Ver- 
mont veteran and talked away in his most entertaining 
manner. He did not know then that Harriet Beecher 
Stowe and Mary Clemmer Ames were near him, but the 
next week found it out by the following, which the 
former published in the New York Independent : 

William Walter Phelps, the new young member from the 
desert of New Jersey, has the reputation of owning more rail- 
roads than I ran take time to count. That he is a most 
loquacious gentleman I can bear witness, for, coming to 
Washington in the same car with him, I decided that he talked 

40 



His Life and Public Services 41 

faster and longer than any masculine mortal 1 ever beheld, and 
concluded that he was a wild Bohemian just let loose from his 
lair on his way to the capital, to write up "Injun" story 
chronicles of Congress. Instead he is one of the menagerie 
himself, and threw off from that flying tongue of his, the other 
day, a very bright speech, which made everybody laugh, even 
when translated to the newspapers — a very stern test. 

Mr. Phelps fairly entered upon his career in national 
politics when he took his seat in the House of Repre- 
sentatives at the opening of the Forty-third Congress, 
and voted for Mr. Blaine, who was elected Speaker. 
Although unacquainted with nearly all the members of 
that House, he was by no means an obscure personality. 
A newspaper fame based upon many interesting incidents 
of his canvass for election and a knowledge of his stand- 
ing and reputation in the great city of New York had 
preceded him. In the brief biography of the members 
published in the Congressional Directory of that session, 
this was said of the Representative from the Fifth Dis- 
trict of New Jersey; 

Wm. Walter Phelps, of Englewood, was born at Dundaff, 
Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, August 24, 1839; was 
graduated at Yale College in i860 with high honors; after- 
ward he pursued his studies in Europe, and later at Columbia 
College Law School of New York, where he received the 
valedictory appointment of his class; then entered immedi- 
ately upon the practice of law; he is a director of the Na- 
tional City Bank and Second National Bank of New York, 
the United States Trust Company, and Farmers' Loan and 
Trust Company; also in the following railroad companies, 
namely: Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, Oswego and 
Syracuse, Syracuse and Binghamton, Cayuga and Susque- 
hanna, International of Texas, Houston and Great Northern, 
New Haven and Northampton, Morris and Essex, and others; 
he was elected Fellow of Yale College in July, 1872. 

Mr. Phelps was then thirty-four years of age and the 
following not inaccurate personal description of him as 



42 William Walter Phelps 

he appeared at the beginning of this term was written by 
one of the renowned journalists of those days : 

Mr. Phelps is just five feet nine and a half inches tall and 
weighs about 170 pounds. He is lithe of limb and very active, 
and walks with a live, springy step. His face is refined and 
handsome, with a wide, grasping, intellectual forehead, and we 
think he has the finest eyes of any man in Congress. They 
are large, well set, and of a beautiful hazel hue — a Tom 
Moore eye. They are not hard. They are kind and tender 
and have penetrating honesty in their gentle gaze, and they 
seem to reflect in a sympathetic way your own thoughts when 
conversing with him. There is a light that falls between you 
and the inner light of those glorious eyes, and that light reflects 
the soul — a soul plain to your sight as noonday's sun. 

Mr. Phelps's manner is simple, gracious and winning, and 
in pleasing harmony with his thoughts, and he never utters a 
platitude. Patient, industrious and resigned, he is a model 
of the highest type of culture. 

The young Representative from New Jersey at the 
outset had before him the task of winning fame in a 
legislative body which had among its members an unusual 
number of very strong men, a few of whom were. Ben- 
jamin F. Butler, Samuel J. Randall, William D. Kelley, 
Stephen B. Elkins, Clarkson N Potter, Henry L. Dawes, 
George F. Hoar, Fernando Wood, Daniel W. Voorhees, 
James A. Garfield, Charles Foster, Samuel S. Cox, James 
H. Beck, Levi P. Morton, Joseph R. Hawley, William P. 
Frye. 

The real work of the session did not begin until after 
the holiday vacation, but the standing committees of the 
House were immediately announced at this session. Mr. 
Phelps was given a place on the Committee on Banking 
and Currency, with one exception the most important 
committee of that House, which was a very high com- 
pliment to be paid a first-session member But he had 
for ten years previously given diligent study to questions 



His Life and Public Services 43 

of currency, revenue, tariffs, and internal taxation, and 
his extensive acquaintance and his associations with finan- 
ciers in New York had so well equipped him for the con- 
sideration of all financial questions that he was able to 
give assistance to the oldest and most experienced mem- 
bers of his committee. 

James G. Blaine, the Speaker of the House, was then 
young, aggressive, and brilliant, guiding all the proceed- 
ings of the body over which he presided with masterly 
skill and dash. No public man exceeded him in intuitive 
knowledge of the ability men possessed to advance them- 
selves and the capacity they had to aid him, and he was 
endowed with a foresight into the political future that 
was almost miraculous. He was not long in discovering 
in this New Jersey Representative a successful young 
lawyer, ambitious, with money and energy, who would be 
Ijkely to make his mark in politics and statesmanship. 
(He learned, too, that one of Mr. Phelps's most distin- 
guishing traits was an unfailing loyalty to his friends 
which never stinted either service or money. A much 
less shrewd man than Mr. Blaine would quickly have 
seized the opportunity to tie such a young man to his 
fortunes. How he succeeded and what it was worth to 
him is partly known, for in after-years, when Mr. Blaine 
needed the service, Mr. Phelps more than requited him 
for all the favors received from the Speaker's chair. The 
social intimacy between these two able men became very 
close, and the New Jersey member was a welcome visitor 
daily and at all hours at the Speaker's historic house on 
Fifteenth Street, and nothing of a social or political 
nature transpired in which they were not together. Thus 
grew that ardent and sincere mutual friendship which 
prompted these distinguished public men to afford each 
other powerful assistance for the rest of their lives. 

Mr. Phelps was not long in getting into the harness. 
The Congress just previous had passed a salary bill which 
had increased the compensation of the President, United 



44 William Walter Phelps 

States Senators, Representatives in Congress, Judges of 
the Supreme Court, and some other high officials. This 
increase of compensation was not so much objected to 
by the country as the provisions the bill contained that 
allowed those benefited to claim back pay for a certain 
specified date, and in this way members of Congress had 
voted themselves several thousand dollars each, that they 
were not entitled to during their time of service. A few 
renounced this back pay at once; others awaited an ex- 
pression of public opinion ; while those who were bolder 
and more rapacious drew their back pay as soon as the 
bill became a law. The President had no sooner signed 
the bill than a storm of indignation broke out all over the 
country. All who had voted for the measure were de- 
nounced by the newspapers of all parties as "back-pay 
grabbers" and despoilers of the public treasury. During 
the Congressional interim, State legislatures, political 
conventions, and public gatherings of all kinds demanded 
a repeal of the obnoxious law. 

As soon as the House of the Forty-third Congress was 
organized, bills were introduced to repeal what was stig- 
matized as the "salary grab" measure, and there followed 
a flood of amendments providing for various modifica- 
tions and compromises, rather than a repeal of the entire 
law. 

The proceedings in the House were momentous, and 
the action to be taken would be of vital importance to the 
Republicans, public sentiment having made a Republican 
Congress responsible for the odious enactment. All the 
giants of both parties in the House took part in the dis- 
cussion. The law sought to be repealed was not wholly 
bad ; the increase of the salary of the President from 
$25,000 to $50,000 a year and the addition to the pay 
of the Supreme Court Judges were right and proper. 
The difficulty was in making a just discrimination. 

It was held to be hardly in good form for a new mem- 
ber to talk during his first session. Ikit the young 



His Life and Public Services 45 

Jerseyman had no intention to serve any sort of an ap- 
prenticeship designed by the unwritten rules of the 
House. On December 8th, only a week from the begin- 
ning of the session, when Mr. Phelps arose and the 
Speaker announced "the gentleman from New Jersey 
has the floor," the old members turned in their seats to 
look at the new Representative who had the temerity to 
ignore the time-honored usage of the House, and the 
newspaper reporters in the gallery sharpened their pencils 
and made ready to chasten in their reports a neophyte 
who had assumed that he was qualified to enter at once 
upon the full discharge of his duties. The new member 
from New Jersey showed no sign of embarrassment. His 
voice was not deep nor strong, but clear and distinct, and 
could be easily heard. His manner was deliberate and 
argumentative, and it was soon discovered that his know- 
ledge of the matters under consideration was superior to 
that of some of the members of far more experience who 
had already spoken in that discussion. He contended 
for a thorough reform of the system of compensation to 
Senators and Representatives; that all "back pay" not 
already drawn should be refunded to the treasury; that 
the franking privilege should be abolished ; the mileage 
abuse rectified ; that the pay of the members should be a 
certain fixed sum, without allowances for stationery, news- 
papers, or mileage, except the actual amount paid for 
transportation. He argued for the retention of the in- 
crease to the salaries of the President, members of the 
Cabinet, and Judges of the Supreme Court. He did not 
attempt a pretentious address, only spoke incidentally in 
the course of the debate, but with a force and clearness 
and precision of statement that created surprise on the 
floor and commanded the admiration of the reporters in 
the gallery. After this he never addressed the House 
without at the very start catching the attentive ear of the 
newspaper men, who always found that he had something 
to say worth reporting. He was on his feet less than 



46 William Walter Phelps 

fifteen minutes, but in that time made his mark as a par- 
liamentary speaker and debater of the highest grade. 

Immediately after the passage of the reconstructed 
salary bill, an attempt was made to restore the former 
franking privilege, with all the old abuses, which were part 
of a law repealed by a previous Congress. This was to 
be done under the guise of a bill for the "distribution of 
public documents, seeds, and the free circulation of news- 
papers in the mail in counties where published." It was 
claimed that these concessions were in the interest of 
farmers, country editors, and the people generally. This 
measure was strenuously advocated by the members from 
the West especially, who courted the favor of the 
"Grangers," then an organization of much power. The 
debates in the House were animated and there was much 
dodging by those who really wanted a renewal of the 
franking abuses, but wished to escape the odium of assist- 
ing in the revival. When the bill was under discussion 
on February 14th, Mr. Phelps attacked it in a speech 
which became memorable for its humor, pungency, and 
sarcasm. He demonstrated that its provisions were con- 
trary to all the Republican pledges of economy, and their 
enactment would fasten upon the country an uncalled-for 
expense for the distribution of public documents that 
very few wanted. He held up to ridicule and scorn the 
practice of members in franking of government docu- 
ments and seeds. His entire speech, while argumenta- 
tive, was enlivened with sparkling wit and the keenest 
irony. No more genuinely humorous speech was ever 
delivered in Congress and he fairly ridiculed the franking 
clauses of the bill into utter contempt and defeat. (This, 
with other speeches of Mr. Phelps, will be found in an 
Appendix to this volume.) 

The next day, Mr. Cobb of Kansas, a ready talker of 
considerable eloquence, who essayed to be a champion 
of the Western agriculturists, and who was somewhat of 
a chronic oflfice holder, sought to neutralize the effect of 



His Life and Public Services 47 

the Jerseyman's caustic address by assailing him with 
gross personalities. On the floor he taunted Mr. Phelps 
with being an investor in speculative enterprises, a director 
in banks and other capitalistic corporations, a defender 
of railroads, and therefore he was an enemy of the farm- 
ers and land workers of the country. He read from the 
Congressional Directory the New Jersey member's record 
to sustain his assertions. No one was ever more tolerant 
of personal criticism than Mr. Phelps, but his financial 
doctrines and his business relations had been so palpably 
misrepresented that he thought the tirade of the Kansas 
man called for some notice. He embraced the first 
opportunity that came the next morning to make a re- 
sponse to his critics, and he spoke in a more serious but 
not less caustic manner than on the day previous. He 
did not deny his connection with railroads, nor that he 
was their defender when he thought they were unjustly 
assailed, and in his reply to his assailant he said: 

He has found facts, and read them from the Congressional 
Directory, in which there were extracts from the New Jersey 
Legislative Manual. With the propriety of the method with 
which he constructed that portion of his argument, I find no 
fault. If it suits him it suits me. . . . But why did not 
the gentleman, when he was presenting that record, say some- 
thing like this: " It is a disgrace to this member of the House 
that he has secured these positions. It is a disgrace to this 
member that widows and orphans have been willing to trust 
him with their funds. It is a disgrace in my State, and in 
other States, that he buried his money in railways which made 
the country rich, and which have left him poor. But it is 
proper to say that when he had done all these disgraceful acts, 
still when the people of his district sent him to Congress, he 
announced publicly his misfortune. " If it be a disgrace to be a 
director of trust companies and of banks; if it be a disgrace 
to be a director of railroad and express companies; if it be 
wicked and contrary to the spirit of American institutions 
that I should endeavor by thrift and honesty to accumulate 



48 William Walter Phelps 

that property for which others toil, yet I take the credit that 
I made a clean breast of it. My friend from Kansas might at 
least have done me that justice. A friend suggests that it 
might be proper to review the record of the gentleman from 
Kansas. 

Take the book. There is nothing in it of which he need be 
ashamed. I find that instead of wasting his time in increasing 
the material interests of this country, instead of building rail- 
roads, or establishing banks, or doing anything of that dis- 
reputable, but humble and useful kind; but wiser than I, he 
preferred, as a non-producer, to continually feed at different 
corners of the public crib. The gentleman's record, there- 
fore, was different from mine. I earned my own support; he 
took his from the people. I labored every day to accumulate 
that material wealth which is the secret of anew country's de- 
velopment and growth ; he chose in a politic way, to use in a 
proper manner the wealth which others had accumulated. It 
is no disgrace to me, that, having a taste for material interests, 
I chose to labor for the development of the country; neither 
is it any disgrace to him that, having a taste and capacity for 
public life, he went into it and from his majority has held office. 

This felicitous retort, which is only quoted briefly here, 
and its pertinent criticism of the Kansas Representative, 
was so disconcerting to the latter that he hurriedly aban- 
doned the offensive, but retreated in good order with the 
following pleasant remarks about his opponent : 

I want to say to the gentleman from New Jersey that I never 
intended to arraign him in the slightest degree because he held 
these positions. I honor him for what he acquired; I honor 
him for his ability displayed upon this floor; I honor him for 
his general ability and for his distinction as a man. No man 
on this floor goes before me in respect for the gentleman from 
New Jersey; but I called attention to a fact which I believed 
I had a right to do; and when I saw the representative of an 
enormous number of these corporations rising upon this floor 
and arraigning the grangers of the West, I thought it my duty 
to myself and my ronstituents to say that he ought not to do 



His Life and Public Services 49 

it. I did it without any intention to insult, and without in- 
tending any offence at all to the gentleman from New Jersey. 

It is hardly necessary to say that after this no one in 
the Forty-third Congress tried to crush out the young 
man from New Jersey. 

This forensic duel between the Kansas and New Jersey 
Representatives had a rather happy sequel. Mr. Cobb 
was unpopular with a faction of his own party at home 
and the opposition to him was bitter and unscrupulous. 
His enemies collected a cubic foot of newspaper clippings, 
affidavits, judicial records, etc., which it was expected 
would annihilate Mr. Cobb's political career, and all this 
mass was sent by express to his New Jersey antagonist, 
with a very earnest request that Mr. Phelps would use 
the contents "to give old Cobb" a merciless excoriation. 
Mr, Phelps glanced at the enclosures and without reading 
immediately sent them to Mr. Cobb's lodgings with this 
note : 

Mr. Phelps regrets that Colonel Cobb has such base con- 
stituents; he regrets still more that they should think. Mr. 
Phelps base enough to use such material. 

The Kansas member sought out his late adversary 
without delay, thanked him gratefully, and as long as he 
lived, Mr. Phelps had no warmer friend than Stephen 
Alonzo Cobb, who, despite his varied record, was popu- 
lar among the frontiersmen, and although he lost his seat 
in Congress, he was kept in office as Mayor, Assembly- 
man, and State Senator to the end of his days. 



CHAPTER VI 

Takes a Leading Part on the Currency Question and Gains Fame for His 
Clear Exposition of a False Currency — Opposes the Civil Rights Bill 
and Loses Caste with His Party — Urges the Repeal of the Infamous 
Moiety Law — Review of His First Session — Defeated for Re-election 
in a Democratic Tidal Wave — Felicitous Correspondence with His 
Successful Opponent 

THE legislative appropriation bill of this session was 
a very complicated affair, involving not only ques- 
tions of expenditures, but of collecting the revenues, the 
methods of the revenue officials, and the distribution of 
national currency. The discussions of this bill were pro- 
longed during the winter, and as Mr. Phelps was well in- 
formed upon all the subjects under consideration, he took 
an active and influential part in all the deliberations. 

On April i, 1874, he made the speech which gave him 
his greatest fame as an orator and an expert on finance 
and currency. It was on the Banking and Currency Bill 
which was reported by his own committee, and to which 
he added an amendment providing for the immediate and 
gradual resumption of specie payments which had been 
suspended by the government since the beginning of the 
Civil War. It was the greenback era of irredeemable 
paper currency, and gold was at a high premium. Mr. 
Phelps presented, on behalf of his amendment, all ihc 
arguments for a currency redeemable in gold which 
twenty years later became so trite and familiar to the 
whole country, but which at that lime were novel to the 
mass of the people. His opening remarks were these: 

50 



His Life and Public Services 51 

Mr. Speaker, we are bound to give the people of these 
United States a sound currency. We are bound to give tliem 
specie payments; for only gold, or a credit based on gold, is 
a sound currency. We are bound, whether we be liberals, 
republicans, or democrats, by express promise; we are bound 
by the provisions of a law, the first ever signed by our Chief 
Magistrate; we are bound by the oath we took as members of 
this House to support the Constitution; we are bound by the 
conventions of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Baltimore, which 
pledged the three great parties to " speedy resumption "; we 
are bound by the act of March, 1869, which "solemnly 
pledged the public faith to make provision at the earliest 
practicable period for the redemption of the United States 
notes in coin "; we are bound by the Constitution, which was 
formed "to promote the general welfare." Can we better 
provide for the general welfare than by giving to the people a 
uniform, stable currency ? 

For the general welfare, for the interests of other classes, 
others may speak. Let me to-day speak for the interests of 
labor — the labor of the farm and of the shop. I believe, and 
I think I can show, that while the moral evils resulting from a 
depreciated currency fall uniformly, the material ill, the real 
suffering and loss, fall upon the laborer and the farmer. The 
capitalist and merchant, in the resources of varied exchanges 
and varied investments, may adjust and shift the loss; the 
poor man receives it all. Wall Street, and Beacon Street, and 
Chestnut Street may escape; the farm and the workshop never. 
Therefore I urge to-day the resumption of specie payments in 
the name of the farmer and mechanic. 

The New Jersey member was no longer the humorist 
of the House, but the practical economist and sober 
reasoner, versed in the art of finance. For nearly two 
hours, with not a written word before him, he intelli- 
gently and logically presented the learning connected 
with a sound currency, giving the history, the theory, 
and the philosophy of money, with distinctions so fine, 
so subtle, and so novel, and yet so just that the elemen- 
tary truths, as he so grouped them, have been made the 



5 2 William Walter Phelps 

basis of most of the arguments since made on that side 
of the currency question. The House found that it was 
learning something of value and every member listened. 
The time of the young economist was extended for half 
an hour by unanimous consent and he concluded with the 
following words : 

I ask the Government to pay the promises that it made 
twelve years ago, and pay these greenbacks on demand, dollar 
for dollar, and ask the Government to do so by borrowing on 
its bonds, payable fifty years after date, money with which to 
pay its present indebtedness. In my opinion there is but one 
way to make the currency equal to money, and that is to fol- 
low that straight, narrow path, which is the path of honesty. 
The Government must pay its debts when they are due. 
Then alone can we expect to be again a prosperous and happy 
and honored nation. 

The speech was telegraphed in full across the continent 
and published the next day in all the leading newspapers 
of the East. It was pronounced by influential journals 
and experts in finance the best speech purely on the sub- 
ject of national currency that had ever been made in 
Congress. It was published and distributed broadly by 
individuals and societies, and was republished in Eng- 
land, Germany, and France. In Germany it was made 
the basis of a financial primer and introduced into the 
public schools. Benoni Price, the eminent Professor of 
Political Economy at Oxford University, made a per- 
tinent criticism upon this speech, saying: 

I have nowhere seen the evils of inconvertible currency 
traced out in detail witli so much ])ower and so much fullness 
as in his simple straightforward words. It is always most re- 
freshing to me to meet with plain, direct, intelligible language 
in tlie region of jungle and confusion. This false currency 
has been treated by many speakers and writers, but I still had 
felt all along that the cruel injury to traders — most of all, the 
small ones— had not been traced in visible and vivid colors 



His Life and Public Services 53 

before the eyes of his countrymen. This is the great service 
Mr. Phelps has performed for them. 

In 1873 ^^'^^ 1874 the Republican party was losing a 
good deal of its prestige and standing in the country, and 
its leaders in Congress adopted a plan which they thought 
would permanently establish negro domination in the 
South and force negro political and social equality over 
the whole land. To carry out this scheme, General Ben- 
jamin F. Butler of Massachusetts introduced in the House 
a bill designed not only to place the control of elections in 
the Southern States in the hands of Federal officials, but 
which proposed most strenuously to protect colored people 
in all the civil rights which were claimed for them. The bill 
in question contained clauses which forbid any discrimina- 
tion against negroes in enjoying all the privileges of every 
public school, place of amusement, hotel, restaurant, 
public conveyance, or benevolent institution. In fact it 
was intended to enforce negro equality in everything. 
The bill was discussed for many days, during the whole 
of the Forty-third Congress, and numerous amendments 
were offered. Mr. Phelps opposed this legislation in all 
its stages from first to last and voted against it on its 
final passage in the second session of that Congress. He 
held firmly to the opinion that the passing of the bill was 
bad for the colored race and would do them more harm 
than good. More than all, as a lawyer he was convinced 
that the Civil Rights Bill, as it was called, was a violation 
of the Constitution, which he and all other members of 
the House had sworn to support. The foremost consti- 
tutional lawyers of the House and Senate strove in vain 
to convince him of its constitutionality. His opposi- 
tion to the bill was distasteful to the Republican leaders, 
and to those of his own State especially, who expected to 
reap from the passage of this bill and the fostering of a 
prejudicial public sentiment great partisan advantages. 
Influential Republicans of New Jersey, one or two of 



54 William Walter Phelps 

whom subsequently reached the highest government 
stations, tried to impress upon the Congressman that it 
was his duty to support the bill as a party measure, 
creating legitimate political capital, and to allow the re- 
sponsibility of determining its constitutionality to devolve 
upon the Supreme Court. Mr. Phelps could not be 
made to view the question in that light for a moment. 
He had a wholesome independence of adverse criticism, 
and although an ardent Republican, he was not the hide- 
bound partisan to sustain through thick and thin every 
measure which might be demanded by party clamor or 
partisan expediency. At the close of the debate on this 
bill, these were his remarks : 

You are trying to do what it seems to me this House ever- 
lastingly tries, in one form or another, to do — to legislate 
against human nature. You are trying to legislate against 
human prejudice, and you cannot do it. No enactment will 
root out prejudice, no bayonet will prick it. You can only 
educate away prejudice; and to endeavor by a law to change 
the constitution of human nature is as idle as to send your 
cavalry to charge a mountain mist. In this view this measure 
is only idle and foolish. But worse than that, if enacted, 
while it will not be carried out, it will effect positive and per- 
nicious ill. Let us end this cruel policy. Let us not have 
bayonets! " Let us have peace." 

But after you leave matters of opinion and come to matters 
of conviction, then I no longer recognize the claims of party. 
Then come the claims of manhood and of conscience, which 
are higher, and them I choose to obey when it comes to a 
matter of conscience and right like this. ... In my 
opinion it is clear as the noonday sun that this whole legisla- 
tion, both in spirit and in letter, is hostile to the Constitution; 
hostile to the Constitution which protects the minority; hostile 
to the Constitution which we swore to defend. 

Three Republicans only in the Hou.sc had the courage 
to vote with Mr. Phelps against this bill, which, as he 



His Life and Public Services 55 

predicted, carried only contention to the South, where it 
could not be practically enforced, and brought vexation 
and annoyance to the North, where its mandates were 
evaded. When the question of its legality finally reached 
the Supreme Court of the United States, its civil rights 
clauses were decided to be unconstitutional, null, and 
void. 

Mr. Phelps had caused to be appointed a committee 
to investigate the abuses prevailing under the infamous 
"Moiety Law," which created a horde of rascally spies, 
informers, and conspirators that centred at the collector's 
office in the New York Custom House. Under the color 
of law, honest importers had been fleeced out of hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars, a large part of which lodged 
in the pockets of these scoundrels and their tools, and 
among the latter were some lawyers of more acuteness 
than conscience. The shameful practices permitted by 
this law were so strongly exposed that when a movement 
was made in Congress for its repeal it met with little 
opposition. 

When the final adjournment of the House came in the 
latter part of June, the Representative from the Fifth 
District of New Jersey had performed his full share of 
the work of that busy session. His influence had been 
felt in the disposal of the most important measures. He 
had been industrious in the committee room, in the in- 
troduction and passage of numerous bills, and in all the 
routine labors of the House. His official life had greatly 
increased his correspondence, which always had been 
large. He was always prompt in answering letters of 
every kind, so that he required at Washington the ser- 
vices of a stenographer and several clerks. Yet he 
found time hospitably to entertain his many friends, ac- 
quaintances, and visitors, including politicians from his 
own State and district. He had been given by the 
Speaker proper opportunities on the floor and had spoken 
upon most of the pending bills of consequence. His per- 



56 William Walter Phelps 

captions were so quick and his memory so retentive that 
he soon became proficient in a knowledge of the perplex- 
ing rules of the body of which he was a member, that few 
are enabled to master except through the experience of 
several sessions, and when the separation came he was 
well up to that small body who are recognized in each 
Congress as "leaders of the House." It was before the 
close of this session that President Grant wanted to make 
Mr. Phelps First Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, but 
the latter felt that he could not accept the offer. 

In the latter part of July, 1874, there was a great cele- 
bration in Paterson, arranged by veteran soldiers. It 
was begun with an immense military and civic parade, 
in which were President Grant and a body of national 
government dignitaries and State officials of New Jersey. 
The exercises were in a large wigwam and Mr. Phelps 
was the orator of the occasion. He made a very thought- 
ful address upon the blessings of peace, picturing the evils 
and horrors of war, and urging arbitration for the settle- 
ment of national difficulties in every case possible. His 
remarks were listened to with attention and greeted with 
frequent applause, but the glamor of the war was still 
over the land, and the soldiers of the victorious North 
were everywhere receiving political preferment and dis- 
tinguished honors. Consequently, arguments for peace 
were not so impressive as they are to-day, when Mr. 
Phelps's thoughts of thirty years ago are those prevailing 
among the great and most civilized nations of the globe. 

Congress not having ended until it was well in the sum- 
mer, Mr. Phelps did not have much rest in private that 
year, for in the fall a new Congress was to be elected and 
the campaign began early. 

The times were inauspicious for the Republican party. 
There had been a general monetary panic in 1873; the 
business of the country continued to be prostrated, its 
manufacturing industries paralyzed, and the working 
classes of the nation lacked remunerative employment 



His Life and Public Services 57 

and were dissatisfied and soured. Under such conditions 
it is always the party in power at Washington that is held 
responsible by the not very deeply reasoning masses of 
voters. Besides all this, the many scandals of the Grant 
administration — the Credit Mobilier exposure and the 
back-pay grab, the revelation of defalcations and corrup- 
tions among important public officials, persistent rumors 
and charges that still greater criminality had been con- 
cealed, and the general laxity of official morals growing 
out of a long war, had created a deep distrust of the Re- 
publican party even in its strongholds. This was the load 
with which Republican candidates were weighted that 
year. The State elections in the fall, prior to Novem- 
ber, were almost without exception disastrous to the Re- 
publicans and ominous of the general defeat of the party 
a few weeks later. 

Mr. Phelps was renominated by his party without op- 
position, and this result was hailed with commendation 
by the Republican and independent press the country 
over, and with complimentary notices from fair-minded 
Democratic journals. But some adverse influences were 
at work. From personal jealousy of his rapid rise into 
prominence and his display of partisan independence, a 
few of the Republican leaders of New Jersey were indif- 
ferent to his success, if not actually hostile, and partly for 
the same reason the administration was lukewarm, when 
it might, within proper bounds, have lent its influence 
and encouragement. 

The Democratic candidate was Augustus W. Cutler, 
a well-known lawyer of Morris County. He was a man 
of moderate ability, whose amiability and fair reputation 
personally had enabled him to be elected from a county 
usually Republican, to the State Senate, where he made 
a clean record. Mr. Cutler accepted the nomination with 
reluctance, and as he said himself, without any expecta- 
tion of being elected. It was the prevailing belief with 
Republicans and Democrats that Mr. Phelps had made 



58 William Walter Phelps 

such a favorable impression by his first service in Con- 
gress, and that the district was so proud of him, that his 
defeat was hardly possible. 

Mr. Phelps was never what might be called a good 
politician. He had a remarkable distaste for the minutia; 
of practical politics and avoided them wholly whenever 
possible. This was the only qualification for public life 
in which he was deficient. Nor at this time did he want 
the close confidence of the political advisers and managers 
who subsequently aided so much in making every one of 
his campaigns a success. Although this year he made 
the customary tours through his district and addressed 
the mass meetings, which were not many, he did not enter 
into the canvass with his usual vim, but permitted himself 
to be misled by indiscreet admirers into over-confidence 
of the result, and awakened from his delusion too late to 
recover lost ground. 

While he was subjected to unrestrained partisan abuse 
throughout his canvass, not one act or vote of his in 
Congress was assailed, except his vote on the Civil Rights 
Bill. This vote had been uniformly approved by the 
Democrats, who used it now, with partial success, to 
prejudice the colored vote against the Republican candi- 
date. The fact stood out plainly that in Congress Mr. 
Phelps had sustained every measure of economy and re- 
form, and he defied his enemies to point out a single in- 
stance where he was unfaithful to the interests of the 
people he represented. 

Election day came and a tempest of discontent swept 
over the entire country, carrying nearly all the well- 
anchored Republican States from their moorings. Massa- 
chusetts elected its only Democratic governor for nearly 
half a century. In New Jersey, the Democratic plurality 
for governor was phenomenal, and the Republicans elected 
but nineteen of the sixty members of the Assembly. The 
Republican candidate in the Fifth District of the State 
went down in the crash, as did scores of his Republican 



His Life and Public Services 59 

Congressional associates, and for the first time since the 
beginning of the Civil War the Democrats secured a 
majority in the national House of Representatives. 

The Democratic majority for governor in Mr, Phelps's 
district was io6i. The vote for Congressional candidates 
was: Cutler, 11,677, Phelps, 11,670. Mr. Phelps there- 
fore was beaten by seven votes only in a district which 
gave a Democratic majority of over one thousand. Al- 
though suffering the misfortune of his party, Mr. Phelps 
felt very proud of the discriminating vote in his favor, as 
he had cause to be, and there was never a denial after 
the result of this election of his strength and popularity 
as a candidate for popular suffrage, and at all elections 
he led at the polls every candidate running upon the same 
ticket. 

There were irregularities and violations of the law 
charged against the Democrats at the election which the 
supporters of the defeated candidate for Congress thought 
would justify him in contesting the seat of his opponent, 
believing that with so small a plurality against him there 
would be a good chance of success. 

The geniality and good-fellowship which Mr. Phelps 
displayed while associating with his political adversaries 
put him on the most friendly footing with the Democrats 
of the House. No sooner had the result in the New 
Jersey Fifth District become known than Mr. Phelps 
received letters from leading Democratic members of the 
old Congress, who would have control of affairs in the 
next House, telling him that if he should determine to 
make a contest, they would see that he had the utmost 
fair play and a most liberal consideration of his case. 
But Mr. Phelps, without hesitation, turned a deaf ear to 
all these alluring suggestions. What made him one of 
the most agreeable of men was his disposition always to 
make the best of everything. He did not now sulk in 
his tent, nor whine over his bad fortune, but with the 
magnanimity that he never lacked, as soon as the result 



6o William Walter Phelps 

of the election was definitely settled through the official 
returns, he penned the following letter to his rival: 

Teaneck, near Englewood, 
Nov. 24th, 1874. 

Hon. Augustus W. Cutler: 

Dear Sir : To-day's canvass breaks my silence, and I can 
tender you my hearty congratulations. Pardon a delay, 
which was necessary, but which seemed ungracious. 

The close vote and the strange irregularities of ballot and 
count forced me, in justice to others, to wait for the assurance 
of your election. 

As a candidate, I was representing those who voted for me, 
and in their name I asked the fullest evidence, that their 
wishes had been legally denied. 

Otherwise the first news of your success should have come 
from your opponent. I can now justly acknowledge my defeat 
and your election. 

I shall not contest your seat — all rumors to the contrary 
notwithstanding. I have no grounds, for I have in my own 
case received that fair play and full justice which I have often 
boasted was the assured possession of all Jersey men. 

The cause of my defeat was very simple — a lack of votes. 
" Only this and nothing more." A majority of the citizens 
who went to the polls preferred another. And I should be 
the last one to question or impede their choice. 

It is a pleasure for me to thank you for the uniform courtesy 
of the canvass, and to ask you, if you cannot say to our many 
common friends, that neither publicly nor privately did your 
Republican competitor find any fault in you, except your 
Democracy. 

I prized the honor of representing this constituency and I 
regret the loss of it; but I am not without consolation in the 
thought that my loss has been your and the public gain. 

You and them, do I congratulate; you, that you have 
secured this large opportunity of serving the people; and 
them, that the voice of their district shall be as before — only 
more eloquently and more efficiently — against those enemies 
of the Republic who would perpetuate an irredeemable cur- 



His Life and Public Services 6i 

rency, increase the central power, and plunder the national 
treasury. 

I am with respect and good wishes for your success, one of 
your constituents. 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 

Mr. Cutler's response was gentlemanly and very cordial, 
and he said in part : 

It is a matter of pleasure to me that you recognize the per- 
sonal honor and courtesy of the canvass, and I can truly say, 
that in looking back, I cannot recall an expression or remark 
that grated harshly on my ear or left an unpleasantness in 
memory. 

I need not say that success was the farthest from my 
dreams, nor did I anticipate that any tidal wave could reach 
you, but now that I am elected, I am painfully conscious of the 
fact, that I immediately succeed one who has secured in a 
single Congressional term a national reputation, made his Dis- 
trict celebrated, compelled all parties to do homage to his 
talent, admire his eloquence, and acknowledge his power. 

I doubt if any Congressman-elect can boast of a constituent 
more chivalric and high-minded than yourself, and I know 
that none can feel more honored than I do when I remember 
that among my constituents I can number you. 

This manly and rather unique correspondence attracted 
much attention and brought out words of approval from 
the most reputable journals of New Jersey and other 
States. 



CHAPTER VII 

His Second Session — Investigates Louisiana Affairs and Exposes the 
Carpet-Baggers — Feted by New Orleans — Leaves Congress — His 
Love for Newspapers and Newspaper Men — Goes to Rescue of the 
New York Tribune — Life at Teaneck — Travels for Health 

THE second session of the Forty-third Congress con- 
vened in December, 1874, and Mr. Phelps was on 
hand with numerous bills to present, some of them 
emanating from his own committee on Banking and Cur- 
rency. It was then the heydey of grecnbackism and 
irredeemable paper money. Mr. Kelley of Pennsyl- 
vania introduced a bill to further inflate the national 
currency by the issue of many millions in paper money, 
which should be a legal tender for all government bonds 
and all government and individual liabilities. This bill 
Mr. Phelps attacked in a speech in which he denounced 
the whole irredeemable paper currency policy as pernici- 
ous, unjust, and dishonest. He said in concluding: 

My friend from Pennsylvania, whose measure is ndw before 
the House, comes and looks at this problem and offers a dif- 
ferent solution. He ignores the public creditor, and glories 
in national protests. He would let the debt stand forever, 
and recognize insolvency as the iiennanent condition of a free 
people. This attempt we are making to-day is an attempt 
which has strewed these six thousand years with failures, and 
which will fail to the end — an attempt to make money. There 
is no way to get money except to earn it or steal it. You can- 
not make it. I wish only to reiterate that in my opinion there 
is but one way to make this currency equal to money, to bring 

62 



His Life and Public Services 63 

it to a par with gold. That is to follow that straight and nar- 
row path which is the path of honesty. The private citizen 
has to follow it; the Government, too, must follow it. The 
citizen pays his debts. We must pay our debts. Then only 
can we expect to be prosperous and happy; then only shall 
we again be a happy, a prosperous, and an honored nation. 

Mr. Kelley's bill did not pass. 

The House ordered the appointment of a special com- 
mittee to investigate the chaotic condition of affairs in 
Louisiana, where there were two rival State governments, 
each claiming to be legally chosen at the election in the 
fall of 1874. The Democratic legislature had been arbi- 
trarily interfered with by General Sheridan under what he 
interpreted to be his instructions from Washington. The 
White League, a very large organization of New Orleans 
citizens, had come to the desperate determination to dare 
anything, legal or illegal, rather than to submit longer to 
the recklessness and pillage of the carpet-baggers, who 
were using for their own profit the State and government, 
which was sustained only by Federal power. The Speaker 
appointed on the committee George F. Hoar of Massa- 
chusetts, William A. Wheeler of New York, William P. 
Frye of Maine, Charles Foster of Ohio, William Walter 
Phelps of New Jersey, James C. Robinson of Illinois, 
Clarkson N. Potter of New York, 

This was the era of Reconstruction, when the ashes of 
the great volcanic eruption in the South were still hot to 
the tread. It required, therefore, on the part of any 
Northern Congressman unflinching courage, a cool and 
unbiassed judgment, and the most unbending, non- 
partisan determination to deal justly with any question 
relating to the South. Mr. Phelps was selected as one of 
the sub-committee to go to New Orleans and take testi- 
mony. The work was done in the custom house of that 
city, the committee toiling day and night for several 
weeks. Each side had agreed to accept the committee 



64 William Walter Phelps 

as final arbitrators, and to cause the resignation ot any 
or all members claiming seats in the respective legislatures 
as the committee might determine, so that there should 
be but one legislature and one State government, 
the legality of which should not be questioned. The 
testimony offered was very conflicting; all of it biassed 
and much of it perjured. Mr. Phelps was convinced 
that the Federal government had gone further than was 
justifiable in many instances and that there were legisla- 
tive seats illegally claimed by both parties. He drafted 
the report of the sub-committee, which was submitted 
to the whole committee and practically adopted by that 
body. Out of this action grew a plan of adjustment 
which was accepted by the opposing parties in the con- 
troversy. It seated and unseated contesting members of 
the legislature, but affirmed the legality of the Kellogg 
State government, which had been in power for more 
than a year. Political quiet followed in Louisiana until 
troubles growing out of the disputed election of Mr. 
Hayes broke out in the fall of 1876. 

The investigation made by this committee exposed 
many of the abuses of the carpet-bagger rule and was the 
first heavy blow struck at that iniquit>-. The South un- 
doubtedly owed a great deal to Mr. Phelps and appre- 
ciated it. The city of New Orleans gave him an imposing 
public dinner. His course was not pleasing to some of 
the radical Republicans of the North, nor was the award 
of the committee very favorably received by the national 
administration, but time fully justified the wisdom of its 
arbitration. 

When the Louisiana investigation was concluded, there 
was an end to Mr. Phelps's work in the P^orty-third Con- 
gress, which expired March 3, 1875. No man in that or 
any succeeding Congress ever elicited from the press of 
the country more attention and comment. He was, as 
a rule, on the best footing with the entire journalistic 
fraternity. He valued newspapers very highly and gave 



His Life and Public Services ' 65 

all the time he could spare to their reading. He said they 
kept him in constant touch with all the throbbing 
world — with its incidents, pleasures, pains, and whole 
history. All this he liked, for he was remarkably fond 
of travelling on the open highway of the world. With 
few exceptions, throughout his whole life, the decent 
newspapers of his own and of other countries treated him 
fairly and courteously. Correspondence with the editors 
of newspapers was with Mr. Phelps a lifelong habit, and 
this intercourse was not wholly confined to the press of 
his own political party. Wattcrson, McLean, Pulitzer, 
Dana, John Bigelow, Godkin, Horace White, and other 
editors of leading Democratic newspapers were his warm 
personal friends. 

He was a most liberal subscriber to newspapers — politi- 
cal, religious, and independent — of all parties and sects, 
including the leading journals of New Jersey and nearly all 
those of his own county and Congressional district. His 
benefactions and gratuities to newspaper publishers and 
to journalists were extremely liberal, and were ceaseless 
from the very beginning of his participation in politics. 
He seldom refused when appealed to by a newspaper 
man for aid. 

Shortly after the death of Horace Greeley, a syndicate 
of capitalists and politicians, representing certain interests 
in the Republican party, planned to obtain a controlling 
quantity of the stock of the New York Tribiine establish- 
ment, which they thought was at that time within their 
reach. It was reported that a large sum of money would 
be required almost immediately to keep the paper under 
the control existing at that juncture and that Mr. Phelps 
was largely instrumental in the advancement of the funds 
which saved the Tribune from being transferred to strange 
hands. 

He had now acquired, both in and out of Congress, a 
fame for the highest class of oratory, the lustre of which 
never became dim. He had not the "Front of Jove" — 



66 William Walter Phelps 

none of the physical presence or massiveness that makes 
oratory so impressive with many speakers. Nature sealed 
a great heart and graceful mind in a body not large in 
stature. But yet he owed much to his personality, for 
there was that about him that inspired all whom he met 
with a sense of his capacity and more than ordinary ac- 
quaintance with human affairs. He possessed in an emi- 
nent desfree the touchstone that drew attention to him 
in every assemblage. 

He wrote some of his speeches, but never studied them 
afterward. When a speech was written, the manuscript 
was immediately thrown aside and never looked at again. 
When speaking extemporaneously, his thoughts came to 
him clearly and well-formed and he seemed never puzzled 
with half-formed ideas. He adored the fresh and original, 
and seldom in his speeches, writings, or conversation did 
he indulge in stock quotations. His language was strik- 
ingly plain, and no one ever heard him utter a sentence 
that was not clean-cut, or that was capable of more than 
one meaning. With such a command of diction as he 
possessed, there is a temptation to resort to glittering 
rhetoric as a substitute for knowledge, but to this he 
never yielded. One of the highest compliments he 
thought was ever paid to his mental and verbal clearness 
was that of a Holland working man of the First Ward of 
Paterson, who understood English with difficulty. This 
man, after listening to a political speech by Mr. Phelps, 
said: "Why, he talks in such a way that we poor Hol- 
landers can understand every word he says." Yet no 
man was less of a platitudinarian, and on the rostrum, as 
in ordinary conversation, he was so bright, direct, and 
sincere that few listeners failed to be fascinated by the 
magic of his voice, the gracefulness of his language, and 
the cleverness of his thoughts. 

While serving his first term in Congress, Mr. Phelps 
had the usual experience of national legislators in the 
disposal of Federal offices. This was one of the most 



His Life and Public Services 67 

disagreeable of all his public duties. It created for him 
the most virulent enemies that he afterwards found in the 
Republican ranks in his district. He listened in patience 
to all applicants who in personal interviews sought his aid, 
and replied to all letters asking his assistance in office- 
getting with courtesy and with sympathy for disappoint- 
ment when the writer's request could not be granted. 
Doubtless he had to encounter no more than the usual 
difficulties of those who have public offices within their 
control, in placating disappointed office-seekers, never- 
theless his experience in this official business was very 
disagreeable. 

When he took his departure from Washington, there 
was a general wish and expectation that his absence from 
the national legislature would be but temporary 

Mr. Phelps went to his home, not to indulge right away 
in rest and recreation, but to meet the cares of his busi- 
ness office in New York, for, as was the case of most men 
of affairs then, his private estate had become impaired by 
the general depreciation in values caused by the recent 
panic. His offices were on the corner of Broadway and 
Wall Street and were intended solely for convenience in 
the management of his own estate and private affairs. 
On arriving there in the morning, it was his practice to 
proceed at once to the transaction of such business as 
required his personal attention, and he would dispose of 
it in the rapid and careful manner characteristic of him in 
everything. There was a chief of staff and a head for 
each department — corporations, law, real-estate invest- 
ments in and out of New York, and politics. This is the 
manner in which the affairs of his estate are conducted 
to-day, politics omitted. All of his assistants had ex- 
perience in their several departments and they never 
consulted Mr. Phelps except in cases of more than ordi- 
nary difficulty and importance. It was his custom when 
he once trusted a person in his employ to trust him 
absolutely. He would say that it was most distasteful 



68 William Walter Phelps 

to him, and in fact, abject slavery, to be constantly on 
the watch of those serving him. He would rather en- 
dure faithless service than keep up such an intolerable 
vigilance. He never had cause to regret the confidence 
placed in the executive heads of his business affairs. 
Like his father, he had a strong partiality for successful 
men. He was ready to give money lavishly to those who 
were unfortunate, but he could not often be induced to 
place a business trust in the hands of any one who had 
not shown an ability to succeed in the world. 

Naturally, he would have many business engagements 
to meet. He was prompt in fulfilling them and expected 
all who had appointments with him to appear at the fixed 
time. It can be said also that in all social engagements 
he observed the same punctuality. He required exact- 
ness in all the work of his office, and was extremely 
critical in all that related to neatness and accuracy, espe- 
cially in correspondence. 

It was his habit daily to attend to business without 
intermission until one o'clock, when he would go to 
luncheon at the Downtown Club, then the most preten- 
tious place of entertainment in his vicinity. There were 
very few of his New Jersey friends who did not at some 
time enjoy the hospitality of this favorite retreat with 
him. Senators, Congressmen, distinguished journalists, 
and literary men, far and near, when in the city readily 
embraced an opportunity to meet Mr. Phelps at luncheon. 
While he could bear patiently with dull persons, he 
courted bright people, and he had a constant longing for 
brightness, sunshine, and warmth. It is not strange, 
therefore, that more than once there were seated at Mr. 
Phelps's club table, Blaine, Evarts. Thomas B. Reed, 
McKinley, Halstead, Watterson, and other shining intel- 
lects of their class. 

From the club. I\Ir. Phelps would usually return to his 
office to siiin the letters dictated in the morning, and then 
go up-town to meet friends, and. more often than other- 



His Life and Public Services 69 

wise, conduct some of them to share the hospitaHty of 
Teancck, where the social life was so attractive and de- 
lightful to all visitors. He seldom went home without 
being accompanied by one or more guests. 

After his return from Congress, in the spring of 1875, 
Mr. Phelps spent many hours in planning improvements 
to his homestead and looking out for further landed in- 
vestments. He was also taking much interest in the 
education of his sons, who were at school at Newburgh, 
New York. He kept up a continuous correspondence 
with them, and noted attentively the reports of their pro- 
gress. He went with his family to Bushy Hill in the 
latter part of the summer, and later had a long drive 
through the Berkshires. 

In February, 1876, he started on a brief trip to Cali- 
fornia, by the way of Aspinwall, stopping at Acapulco 
and other Mexican ports, and reached San Francisco in 
March. He returned East overland, visiting and noting 
the progress of many of the Western cities. 

While Mr. Phelps was in Washington during his Con- 
gressional service, an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out 
in the hotel where he was stopping, which was caused by 
what was afterward ascertained to be defective drainage 
in the cellar of the building. Many of the guests, in- 
cluding Congressmen and other prominent personages, 
were prostrated, and several deaths resulted. Mr. Phelps 
was one of the victims of the malady. The disease kept 
him in a low physical condition for weeks. Then fol- 
lowed a slow, fluctuating convalescence. But his physi- 
cal health and strength was never again permanently 
recovered. He was always after this a constant physical 
sufferer, rarely knowing an hour free from pain. For the 
repair of his health, he and Mrs. Phelps went in the spring 
of 1876 to spend some months in Europe. In the large 
body of friends who went to the vessel to bid them fare- 
well were a goodly number of representative Republicans, 
who had been Mr. Phelps's political intimates, and who 



^o William Walter Phelps 

came to emphasize the strong desire and lively expecta- 
tion of their party that on his return he would again 
participate in public affairs. 

He had entrance in Europe to the highest circles 
everywhere, and on this tour he gave much time to in- 
vestigation of institutions of learning and art in England. 
France, and Germany, and to the society of scholars, 
authors, and scientists. He visited Oxford University in 
England and like institutions of other nations. The com- 
ments recorded in his diary on the colleges, literature, 
drama, and paintings in the art galleries in the cities he 
visited are proof of what a close and clever observer he 
was. His animadversions on European statesmen then 
in power were exceedingly original and interesting. 

Looking at mementos of Voltaire at Potsdam led him 
to an analysis of that philosopher's character, as well as 
those of the skeptics Hume and Rousseau. One Sunday 
in Paris he attended the American Chapel, where he 
heard a sermon, the sentiment of which he heartily ap- ' 
proved. The discourse was on "The Thorn in the Flesh," 
and deprecated the folly of being over-curious over 
Scriptural puzzles. The comments made by Mr. Phelps 
are evidences that he had a sound faith in the religion of 
Christ. He wrote : 

A personal Christ may be discredited, but his teachings are 
concjuering the world. Equally logical are the processes of 
science and religion. There are different premises, however. 
The premises of the Christian are certainly as well founded in 
reason as those of science. 

He had a naturally reverent mind and never referred to 
the Deity lightly. On occasions when he would sum- 
marize and pass judgment upon the eminent qualities of 
the greatest men he had known, he would in conclusion 
quote the words of a renowned French theologian, who 
began the funeral sermon of Louis XIV. by saying, 
"God alone is great." 



His Life and Public Services 71 

While on his European travels, Mr. Phelps seemed to 
find time to read many books, and in his diary criticised 
them in a manner rare for its novelty and originalit\'. In 
his intercourse with distinguished people in England, he 
gathered much of the history of the titled personages, 
statesmen, and historic characters of recent times and 
past eras that has never been published. 

Mr. Phelps returned to his own land the latter part of 
October and went to the Centennial Exposition at Phila- 
delphia, and then going home, he voted, as he records 
on November 7th. "the whole Republican ticket." 

Before he left Europe, a Republican convention had 
been held in his Congressional district, and the prevailing 
sentiment of that body was that he should be the candi- 
date. The Democratic tidal wave of 1874 had sensibly 
subsided, and it was contended that Mr. Phelps could 
surely recover the district for the Republicans. He had, 
however, sent most positive word to the party leaders 
that his name must not go before the convention. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Great Love for Trees — Plants Six Hundred Thousand Trees on His Tea- 
neck Estate — Studies Arboriculture in Many Lands — Supports 
Blaine in 1880 — Re-elected to Congress — Hackensack Savings Bank 
Fails — Generosity of Phelps 

IF William Walter Phelps really indulged in a "hobby," 
it was his unceasing love for trees and woods. Ar- 
boriculture was with him at all times an absorbing in- 
terest, so strong that it may be called a passion. As 
soon as he made his first purchase of land at Teaneck he 
began the planting of trees, and this before he com- 
menced the reconstruction of the old farmhouse, and 
from 1870 to 1893, the planting and growing of trees was 
one of the leading activities on his estate. At first he 
had only his coachman to help him, and before he went 
to New York of a morning and after his return at night, 
they would spend a few hours putting trees in the 
ground. This was the small beginning of that extensive 
arboriculture on his homestead, where in after-years there 
were growing hundreds of thousands of trees of many 
species. He enjoyed this work, but the initial process 
soon became too slow for him, and therefore experienced 
assistants were engaged and larger and more systematic 
methods were adopted. 

The ornamentation of so large an estate, formed by 
many additions to the original tract at various periods, 
was one of the problems that required intelligence in 
conception and execution, as the scheme had to be de- 
veloped by an accretive process in keeping with the 

72 



His Life and Public Services iz 

extension of the domain. Adaptability to soil and 
climate was an important factor to be considered, as 
many exotics were to be introduced, and experiments 
were tried, some of which turned out to be costly fail- 
ures. But these mishaps never for a moment discouraged 
the proprietor in his struggles to reach his ideals. 

From 1875 to 1880, the arborical progress was very 
great, and Mr. Phelps then began happily to realize some 
of the success of his early efforts, and when the year 1893 
came, there had been planted on his domain fully six 
hundred thousand trees, from single growths and small 
clumps and groups to masses forming a number of acres 
of woodland. In addition to this, natural wood-belts 
were cleared of underbrush and undesirable timber, other 
trees being substituted to produce the wished-for effect. 
In some of the more secluded nooks of woodland, rabbit, 
quail, and partridge lived free from fear of the hunter's 
gun ; here in the early springtime blue violets and trail- 
ing arbutus peep through moss or leaf-strewn soil before 
the grass begins to garb sunny dells in emerald tints. 

In tree planting, the stately Norway spruce preponder- 
ated, the number being 70,000. Of arbor-vitae, 60,000 
were used ; of American elms, 65,000; white pine, 50,000; 
Scotch pine, 25,000; Austrian pine, 35,000; lindens, 25,- 
000. Larch, English elm, imported hemlock, white and 
scarlet maple, Norway maple, ash-leaved maple, beech, 
red cedar, gum, tulip, golden willow, catalpa, oak, cop- 
per beech, and several other varieties were planted in 
quantities of from 2000 to io,000. He liked all kinds of 
arbor and forest trees, but there was something in the 
American elm that was more than ordinarily pleasing to 
him. There were two thousand oaks grown from acorns 
planted in boxes, the success of the experiment amply 
verifying the poet's declaration that "Tall oaks from 
little acorns grow." An experiment of raising chestnut 
trees from the nut was almost equally successful, 60,000 
of the plants having been set out in groves. At first 



74 William Walter Phelps 

threatened with complete destruction, the tops were 
mowed off with a scythe, after which a thrifty growth 
set in, and there is now promise of extensive groves of 
the trees bordering some of the more remote drives. 

Mr. Phelps personally planned an elaborate scheme of 
decorative and protective planting that promised the 
most effective result artistically and gave the greatest 
benefit of shade to the driveways and bridle-paths. This 
was especially illustrated on Bennett's Road, a private 
way nearly three miles long, extending from the armory 
in Englewood to the present mansion. Starting at the 
entrance gate at Railroad Avenue in Englewood city was 
a planting of silver and white maple, then, in order, 
scarlet maple, flowering catalpa, white pine, hemlock, 
and white pine again. Succeeding this came a stretch of 
natural growth known as the "hickory woods." com- 
posed of hickory, elm, beech, chestnut, oak, black birch, 
with here and there an imported tree set in for compan- 
ionship with the towering natives, whose wide-spreading 
arms and rugged bolls proclaim them the offspring of 
ancient times. 

What is referred to as the poplar experiment was made 
on Sheffield Street, which runs from Teaneck to Nord- 
hof, a mile and three fourths. This grand avenue was 
bordered by alternating rows of Lombardy poplar, laurel- 
leaved willow, and white oaks, producing an effect not 
equalled in any other portion of the grounds. Standing 
at the top of the rise and looking down through the vista 
until the eye lost the symmetrical formation in the van- 
ishing point of the perspective, the diversity of form and 
color was an alluring attraction to the senses. The pic- 
ture evidenced the true artistic conception of the master 
mind and the fidelity with which its ideas and instructions 
were carried out. But this delightful product of mind 
and matter was of only fleeting duration. The deadly 
oyster scale and sap gall soon manifested their power, 
and the tall poplars succumbed to the irresistible enemy. 



His Life and Public Services 75 

This left the beautiful avenue with ragged edges that 
were temporarily remedied by successive plantings, each 
in turn perishing. Here and there on high ground, where 
spots of soil seem to have extended a more friendly 
greeting to the immigrants from Lombardy, an occasional 
poplar may yet be seen, but the glory of the tree as a 
correlative element in a broad landscape scheme departed. 

The Diagonal Road, from Teaneck Road and Cedar 
Lane to Englewood, a mile and a half, is heavily bordered 
with a great variety of trees in alternate rows, clumps, 
and belts. The grounds west of Teaneck Road and 
north of Cedar Lane, being more strictly the demesne 
attached to the original home, present some exquisite 
effects and surprises in road borders, massing, and minor 
grouping, the rolling nature of the land presenting in- 
viting possibilities in dips and rises. Riding or walking, 
there is a succession of entrancing views, near and far, 
caught as they appear through breaks in trees, where 
velvety lanes stretch away to glades and dells or ascend 
to grassy knolls. 

Negundo, ash, maple, elm, Norway spruce, willow, and 
several other varieties of trees define and carefully main- 
tain bridle-paths that occasionally run parallel with the 
driveways and then diverge and carry the rider on from 
delight to ever-recurring charm. 

Near the mansion and at more remote points many 
varieties of green and blooming shrubbery added to the 
beauty of the picture. Lilacs, golden-bells, flowering 
japonicas, rose of Sharon, snowballs, syringas, spireas, 
and other shrubs contributed their beauty to the scene 
and their fragrance to the pure air. 

The vines that now cover the ruins are an indication of 
the creepers that gave the house a coat of varying green 
tints from early spring until late fall, and largely main- 
tained the bright colors through the severest winter. 

At one time, somewhat elaborate designs in bedding 
plants were carried out on the immediate home grounds. 



76 William Walter Phelps 

These were abandoned after the burning of the mansion, 
although the greenhouses, with their thirty thousand 
square feet of floor space, produced ample material for 
any venture in this line of ornamentation. 

Wherever Mr. Phelps went during the journeying of 
his entire life, the trees of every clime were an attraction 
and a pleasure to him. In California, Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, he was an interested observer of forests and all 
fine parks. When absent from home, he kept in mind all 
the localities on his estate, in each of which different 
kinds of trees were growing, and was habitually writing 
to his Teaneck manager inquiring after the growth of 
each variety of trees, giving careful directions for their 
care and for additional plantings after sending on new 
species from other countries. On his travels he would 
make a study of the soils on which each species of trees 
would flourish. 

In the small but numerous parks in Washington he 
was, during his whole Congressional service, a most 
familiar figure, so frequently would he seek some one of 
these resorts in which to read his morning newspapers; 
and at Teaneck, its woodlands were his favorite places 
for walking and thought. They appealed to the intense 
idealism and poetry of his nature, while their umbrage 
and quietness soothed him. No odor of the city polluted 
their atmosphere, and no noise of factory was vibrant 
under their shade. 

He had his favorite trees, which he respected, admired, 
and cherished as he would human beings; they seemed to 
have for him an intelligent presence, and in his adoration 
he almost believed they could think. 

Now, in these after-years, it often seems in the autumn 
that there can be heard on the crisp fallen leaves of these 
wooded paths the invisible tread of the one who so often 
walked there in his living manhood. 

It was in 1878 that Mr. Phelps and several associates 
organized a company which they named the " Palisades 



His Life and Public Services ^^ 

Land Company." The purpose of this organization was 
to develop a tract of land of two thousand acres or more, 
purchased of various owners prior to the panic of 1873. 
Since the organization of the Palisades Land Company, 
some of this tract has become the property of others, but 
the company, of which the Phelps estate is by far the 
largest stockholder, still possesses a great many valuable 
acres bordering on the river shore of the Hudson and ex- 
tending along the top of the Palisades from near Engle- 
wood to beyond Alpine. The beautiful views these lands 
afford from the top of the Palisades cannot fail to make 
them the finest sites for elegant country homes to be 
found anywhere near the great metropolis of the nation. 
The anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns was cele- 
brated in New York in January, 1880. It was a rare 
assemblage of brilliant intellects. Mr. Phelps was an 
invited guest, and in the speaking he followed Henry 
Ward Beecher. The theme given him was "Highland 
Hospitality." After paying an appropriate tribute to 
the proverbial hospitality of Scotchmen, he remarked: 

Already we feel that the lack of the age is not the hospi- 
tality that warms the body, but a hospitality that shall warm 
the heart. A stimulated sympathy makes us build hospitals, 
libraries, and galleries, and Bible and tract societies — enough 
to make the outer life of the citizen comfortable and comely, 
and then? How easy to share our homes! How hard, our 
hearts! How easy to give money; how hard to give sympathy 
and love! Yet these qualities only are divine and the most 
vital to the happiness of man. But these qualities are the very 
ones that civilization — modern life — with all its infinite re- 
sources, is powerless to give. . . . Shall our schools and 
colleges, our railways and telegraphs, our galleries and mu- 
seums, our colossal fortunes, putting into single hands the re- 
sources of empire, make a nation whose manners and morals 
shall be good, because their intellectual perception of the right 
and proper shall be perfect; whose institutions of education 
and charity shall be complete and satisfactory, who shall dis- 



78 William Walter Phelps 

charge all duties perfectly, but mechanically and without 
heart? Then life will indeed be perfect and not worth living; 
and human hearts, when not changed to brains, starving in the 
midst of apparent plenty, longing for sympathy and love, dy- 
ing in the midst af life, shall cry in despair : '* Who shall 
deliver us from the bondage of this death ? " Yet this is the 
tendency of modern culture. 

The speaker then made an earnest plea that in religion 
should be confirmed the old gospel of love, and that 
"under its teachings the heart and the soul shall keep 
pace with the intellectual and material progress of the 
age; and that hospitality in its widest scope shall offer 
not only a home, but a heart." These were rather un- 
usual opinions to be set forth in an after-dinner speech, 
but the earnest and heartfelt expressions of the orator 
were loudly applauded. 

In the last of January, i88o, Mr. Phelps went to 
Europe and spent the remainder of the winter in 
Southern France and Italy. Letters from public men 
and political leaders from all over the country followed 
him. They discussed the political conditions then exist- 
ing, foreshadowing the policy of the Republican party in 
the approaching presidential election of that year, and 
urging the absent Jerseyman to again enter into the arena 
of politics. His relations with Mr. Blaine continued to 
be of the most intimate and confidential nature, and he 
was always in correspondence with the Maine statesman. 
Mr. Blaine was in a dilemma. His friends were deter- 
mined to put him in the field in opposition to the third- 
term movement for General Grant, which was led by 
Roscoe Conkling, who had a great dislike for Mr. Blaine. 
The latter did not wish to make the fight, as the an- 
tagonism which it would arouse would be distasteful to 
him, and further, would imperil success. Nevertheless, 
he held, with John Sherman and the most cool-headed 
Republican leaders, that to attempt to elect any man to 



His Life and Public Services 79 

the Presidency for a third term would be disastrous to the 
Republican party. This belief no doubt had an influence 
in his finally yielding to the persuasions of his supporters 
to allow his name to go before the national convention. 

Mr. Phelps returned from Europe in April to do battle 
for his friend. He presided over the Republican conven- 
tion of Bergen County, which elected delegates to the 
State convention to be held at Trenton, and he made a 
warm and enlivening address, citing the reasons why the 
party deserved and might expect success at the elections 
that year. He went as a delegate to the Republican 
State convention in May, called to elect delegates to 
the national convention. The Grant third-term project 
had no small following in New Jersey. Senator Frederic 
T. Frelinghuysen and other Republicans of influence 
favored it. Mr. Phelps labored to have a solid Blaine 
delegation chosen from his own State, and he displayed 
much political talent of the highest degree in accomplish- 
ing his end. During the all-night session of the Com- 
mittee on Platform, he introduced this resolution: 

Resolved, That reasonable dread of executive power, and 
the experience of other republics which have fallen through 
the ambitions of their chief rulers, justify the American peo- 
ple in amending the constitution to provide for one Presi- 
dential term of ten years and the ineligibility of any President 
to succeed himself. 

This was the signal for a high-pressure debate, in which 
the author of the resolution gallantly defended it against 
the assaults of the third-term men. It was denounced as 
a direct insult to the ex-President. Tts champion showed 
that over and over again the Republican party had com- 
mitted itself to a limit of eight years and claimed that the 
present candidate for a third term had himself indorsed 
the principle of this resolution. After an hour's discus- 
sion, it was laid on the table by a vote of nineteen to 
sixteen, eleven members of the committee being absent. 



8o William Walter Phelps 

Although the resolution was not adopted, its introduc- 
tion and the debate upon it killed the third-term move- 
ment in the convention and in New Jersey, which was 
the end Mr. Phelps sought. When the convention as- 
sembled the next morning, the entire delegation selected 
from the State was for Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Phelps was a 
delegate-at-large. 

At the national convention. General Grant and Mr. 
Blaine were the leading candidates in the ballotings, while 
Senator John Sherman had the solid support of the in- 
fluential State of Ohio and some votes from other States. 
There were before the convention the names of several 
"favorite sons" with delegates from their own localities. 
It required three hundred and ninety-nine votes to make 
a nomination. The highest vote for Grant was three 
hundred and six, and that for Blaine two hundred and 
eighty-five. After prolonged ballotings, Ohio abandoned 
Sherman for Garfield, who then received the Blaine vote 
and was nominated, a result that was satisfactory to Mr. 
Blaine's supporters, who found that their favorite could 
not be named. 

In 1878, Charles H. Voorhis of Bergen County, a Re- 
publican, was elected to Congress from the Plfth New 
Jersey District. He became unavailable as a candidate 
for re-nomination, as he had become involved in disas- 
trous bank failures in Hackensack. As the time for 
selecting a candidate to succeed Mr. Voorhis in 1880 ap- 
proached, Mr. Phelps was implored by his warm admirers 
and by representative party men in his district to enter 
the field as a candidate. This he declined to do, pleading 
that his feeble health would not allow him vigorously to 
carry the Congressional banner in the district that year. 
Under pressure, however, he yielded to an agreement 
that he must not be announced as a candidate and posi- 
tively no attempt should be made at the primary elections 
to choose delegates pledged to him, but if the conven- 
tion should, under these conditions, decide to make him 



His Life and Public Services 8i 

its candidate, he would do his best in the canvass. At 
the convention the Bergen County delegation claimed 
that under the party usage their county was entitled to 
name the candidate for Congress for two terms in succes- 
sion, and they would name Mr. Phelps, who should in 
justice be given the nomination without opposition. But 
John Hill of Morris County was very desirous of occupy- 
ing a seat in Congress again, and his adherents had made 
strong efforts for him at the primary elections. Al- 
though Mr. Phelps had positively forbidden that any 
struggle should be made to place him in nomination, he 
had in the convention but six votes less than Mr. Hill, 
who was named. The result created much public disap- 
pointment, and the Bergen County Republicans felt that 
much injustice had been done their county, and while the 
delegates were separating at the adjournment of the con- 
vention, many of them made the declaration that two 
years later on they would, either with or without Mr. 
Phelps's consent, put him forward as an aggressive can- 
didate for the Congressional nomination. It will be seen 
that they kept their word. 

An active part was taken by Mr. Phelps in the manage- 
ment of the presidential campaign of 1880 up to the first 
of October, when he was overtaken by an utter physical 
collapse which seriously alarmed his family and his phy- 
sicians. The most skilful medical advisers insisted that 
he should at once give up everything — free himself from 
all care of business and politics — and go abroad. He felt 
that he would have to yield, but he did not depart until 
he had made two telling speeches at mass meetings, one 
of which was in Paterson, where he was heard by a vast 
assemblage. But so feeble was his health that when the 
vessel that was to bear him away left its dock at Hoboken, 
many of his friends awaiting his departure expressed well- 
grounded fears that they were bidding him a final farewell. 
He landed at Bremen, but before proceeding to Italy and 
the south of France, where he intended to spend the 



82 William Walter Phelps 

coldest months of the winter, he made a tour through 
Southern Germany and Austria. At the beginning of 
January, i88i, just as the train which was to convey him 
to Italy was starting out of the station, a clerk from the 
hotel where he had been stopping came running up and 
tossed into his car letters and papers which had just 
arrived from the United States. He examined his mail 
leisurely as the train went on, and finally coming to his 
newspapers, the first one he opened gave an account of 
the wrecking of the savings bank at Hackensack. His 
first thought was that the closing of the doors of the bank 
at the beginning of the winter would put to loss and 
serious inconvenience, and probably actual suffering, 
many of the depositors of lesser amounts— workers in the 
brick-yards and others who had accumulated small sav- 
ings. Just as soon as he reached a stopping-place of the 
train from which a message could be wired, he sent to his 
New York ofifice this telegram : 

Pay immediately all deposits in savings bank, of one hun- 
dred dollars and under, principal and interest, and charge the 
same to me. 

Sheriff David A. Pell of Bergen County, Mr. Phelps's 
old and tried friend, was entrusted with the payment of 
these moneys. He was furnished with funds within a 
few hours after the cable dispatch was received and was 
ready to make full payments upon the books without any 
delay. The sum that was thus disbursed was about 
eighteen thousand dollars. Mr. Phelps was afterwards 
partially reimbursed by the dividends made by the re- 
ceiver of the bank. Fair-minded men and newspapers 
credited this advance of funds by Mr. Phelps justly as an 
act of disinterested generosity and it elicited great praise 
from the common people. The New York Evening Post 
said : 

The i)urpose we believe to be entirely disinterested. Mr. 
Phelps has done a good many good things in his lifetime, but 



His Life and Public Services 83 

this is certainly one of the very best. If sincere gratitude 
possesses any curative quality, Mr. Phelps may be expected 
back in New York very soon in perfect health. 

Like praise came from many other newspapers far and 
near, and a Hackensack local journal said: 

With all the expressions of sympathy for the poor whose 
scant savings were reduced by the thieving cashier, and the 
little left tied up in the meshes of a just but tardy law, none 
of our wealthy citizens — not even the most heated denuncia- 
tor of the crime and the criminal — have given practical effect 
to their uttered feelings. Individual cases of suffering have 
been frequently mentioned, but beyond the meagre aid fur- 
nished by church societies, the victims of the Bergen Savings 
Bank have received a portion so insignificant as to escape 
public notice. 

With this phase of the situation in mind, it is with an en- 
hanced degree of gratification that we call attention to the act 
of Hon. Wm. Walter Phelps, who, hearing in a foreign land of 
the distress among his poor home-neighbors, views their con- 
dition from the broad plane of unselfishness, and flashes to 
them the cheering words, " I pity you to the extent of your 
loss," accompanying the message with the solid evidence of 
sincerity. This deserves the more positive commendation 
from the fact that Mr. Phelps believed that the deficiency in 
the savings bank would be much greater than at present in- 
dicated. But we know that he did not weigh the matter sor- 
didly — his sole object was to give speedy relief to the suffering, 
and his action will receive no other interi)retation from those 
who avail themselves of his generosity, if they are not wholly 
void of conscience. 

In this day and community, such an exhibition of practical 
philanthropy from a man in no wise interested in or respon- 
sible for the shortcomings of the broken bank, naturally ex- 
cites wonder and comment among those unacquainted with the 
gentleman; but to his friends it is no surprise — it is simply an 
additional proof that he is a man, clothed in that warm mantle 
of charity which is proof against the abrading contact of a 
selfish world. 



84 William Walter Phelps 

The Englewood Standard said this : 

Though compelled by ill health to be absent in a foreign 
land, Hon. Wm. Walter Phelps does more to help the people 
of this county than is generally supposed. About half of the 
1078 depositors in the Savings Bank, who were for a time de- 
prived of their savings by the conduct of Berry, and who had 
a natural fear that they might lose at least a large part of their 
reserves, are thus saved from loss or further inconvenience. 
There are not many men who have the true unselfishness for 
such an act of kindness, to persons for the most part personally 
unknown. Yet it is hard to conceive of a more truly benevo- 
lent way of using means. Those who are aided in this case, 
it is fair to presume, are in almost every instance persons who 
have deserved assistance in any emergency, because they have 
been frugal and industrious. To each of them, and to one 
or two thousand more who are dependent upon them, the 
mere advance of money which they would ultimately recover 
is a great relief. The sudden escape from prolonged and tor- 
turing anxiety, the assurance that they and their families are 
not to suffer whether the final settlement of the bank's affairs 
is to be near or long delayed, are benefits which cannot be 
measured in dollars and cents. The more fortunate, who 
have thousands in reserve, usually have also other incomes. 
But those who have deposits of only $100 or less, in very 
many instances have nothing else to protect them against 
actual suffering in case of sickness or failure of employment. 
Generosity is always admirable. But it deserves four-fold 
appreciation and honor where it is guided, as it is here, by a 
wise regard for the circumstances, the needs, and the probable 
merits of those to whom the helping hand is extended. Mr. 
Phelps has done many things to make the people of Bergen 
County respect and honor him. Hut i)erhaps he has never 
had opportunity to do any other thing that could show more 
clearly how well he deserves the affection which his friends 
in this county and elsewhere have for him. 

In '(\\c Atlantic MontJily Magazi)ic of July, 1S81, was 
this paragraph : 



His Life and Public Services 85 

Leaving the realms of prayer and faith, and returning to 
the palpable ground of good works, we actually have some 
magnificent charities. When the Bergen Savings Bank failed, 
Mr. William Walter Phelps, a politician and an office-holder, 
late a member of Congress, and now minister to Austria, him- 
self, though entirely irresponsible for the loss, paid to the 
small depositors their dues. It is said to have cost him twenty 
thousand dollars, and from a business point of sight I do not 
see how it can be justified; but for solid happiness how can it 
be surpassed! 

Mr. Phelps made a careful record of much that he ob- 
served in various countries and places, and he wrote in a 
letter from Florence: 

I see lots of suggestions in building; and if I could only 

draw, how often I should jot them down for future use. 

I 've been in many countries, old and famous and 

rich, but there is no country where the poor man has his rights 

and chances as in our own. 



CHAPTER IX 

Appointed Minister to Austria — His Real Estate in Washington — Assassin- 
ation of President Garfield — Sympathy of the Austro-Hungarian 
Government and People — Generous Contribution to the Garfield 
Fund — A Tour in Oriental Lands — Resigns His Mission 

MR. GARFIELD had been elected President, and Mr. 
Phelps had been informed by letters from Mr. 
Blaine early in the winter of i88i that the Maine states- 
man would be Secretary of State. The new administra- 
tion was inaugurated on the 4th of March. Mr. and Mrs. 
Phelps had been at Nice for some time, but had left for 
Florence in the early days of March, just a day previous 
to a very disastrous theatre fire at Nice. The newspapers 
published the following incident connected with Mr. and 
Mrs. Phelps's arrival at Florence: 

When Mr. Phelps reached his hotel two cable dispatches 
were handed to him that had been forwarded from Nice. 
The first was from his friend, Mr. S. B. Chittenden of 
Brooklyn, which read: "Are you hurt?" This puzzled 
Mr. Phelps very much, for, having been on the road, he 
had not heard of the fire at Nice, and his friends in this 
country not having received any word of reassurance 
from him or Mrs. Phelps were much alarmed, fearing that 
he might have been at the theatre, and sent a cable 
dispatch to inquire. The second telegram was opened, 
which was unsigned, and contained these words: "Nom- 
inated Minister to Austria." This only intensified the 
mystery, and there was quite a wonderment for a time 
until Mr. John Bigelow, who had been wintering at Flor- 

S6 



His Life and Public Scrv^ices 87 

ence, came in and on being shown the dispatches ex- 
claimed : "I can explain!" and then Mr. Phelps for the 
first time learned of the theatrical fire, and that he had 
received the unexpected appointment to the Austrian 
mission, 

Mr. Phelps returned at once to the United States and 
went to Washington to receive his commission as Minister 
to Austria and the instructions of the State Department. 
It was while awaiting these formalities that he was in- 
duced to make an investment in Washington real estate. 
At the beginning of the march of improvements toward 
the northwestern section of the national capital, a dis- 
tinguished member of Congress from Ohio bought a plot 
of ground on Dupont Circle, a locality then but very little 
developed. He became impoverished in health and some- 
what in purse and needed to sell his land to a cash pur- 
chaser. It was then that the owner's friends, finding Mr. 
Phelps in Washington, persuaded him to advance the 
money and take the property at fully its value. Real- 
estate experts did not hesitate to say that the purchaser 
had allowed his sympathy to impair his judgment, but in 
a few years that section became the most desirable in the 
city, and in 1890 Mr. Phelps had disposed of most of this 
land for more than three times what it cost him. It was 
on a part of these lots that Mr. Blaine built his large and 
famous house. While owning the Dupont Circle prop- 
erty, Mr. Phelps bought for less than ninety thousand 
dollars some acres of land on the heights at the foot of 
Massachusetts Avenue, which was once part of a renowned 
country seat called "Kalorama," the home of Joel Bar- 
low, a celebrated Connecticut statesman of the early days 
of the republic. This property was afterwards parted 
with in whole or in part at a satisfactory profit. Mr. 
Phelps made other large investments in Washington real 
estate, and at one period owned property in that city 
approximating in value one million dollars. 

The comments of the leading newspapers and of public 



/ 



88 



William W^alter Phelps 



men on President Garfield's selection for the Austrian 
mission were exceptionally complimentary. The choice 
was no doubt a wise one. Mr. Phelps had the patience 
and the tolerant disposition of a natural diplomat, to- 
gether with tact, skill, and cleverness for seeing the right 
time and the right method in transactions. This is the 
way the commission read that Mr. Phelps received: 

yavics A. Garfield, President of the United States of America, 
to IViliiam IValter Phelps of New Jersey, Greeting. 
Reposing special trust and confidence in your Integrity, 
Prudence, and Ability I have nominated and by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate, do appoint you Envoy Ex- 
traordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States 
of America, to Austria-Hungary; authorizing you, hereby, to 
do and perform all such matters and things as to the said 
place or office doth appertain, or as may be duly given you 
in charge hereafter, and the said office to hold and exercise, 
subject to the conditions prescribed by law. 

In testimony whereof, I have caused the Seal of the United 
States to be hereunto affixed. 

Given under my hand at the City of Washington, the Fifth 
day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand 
(Seal) eight hundred and eighty-one, and of the Indepen- 
dence of the United States of America the one hun- 
dred and fifth. 

James A. Garfield. 
By the President. 

James G. Blaine, 

Secretary of State. 

The new Minister reached Vienna in June and was 
most graciously received by the Austrian Kmporor, with 
whom he could talk fluently in F'rcnch. that being the 
customary language of the Austrian Court. The Ameri- 
can Minister in a short time established himself in a mae- 
nificent home, having hired for a residence and for the 
business of the legation a marble palace, owned by one of 



His Life and Public Services 89 

the princes of the Empire. He fitted it up with an eye to 
comfort as well as to elegance, and here the American 
Minister began to entertain of^cials of the Government 
and other guests with lavish hospitality. 

Our Minister was barely settled in his new home when 
very early on a lovely Monday morning in July there 
came to the American embassy the startling news that 
President Garfield had been shot by an assassin on the 
Saturday previous. The sad news spread throughout 
Vienna with lightning rapidity. All the ambassadors and 
foreign ministers present in the capital; all the chiefs of 
the civil and military departments called at the legation, 
or left cards, or sent notes ; while telegrams from every 
quarter where tourists seek protection from the invading 
summer's heat begged for information. 

In European Court circles paramount are the rules of 
etiquette. Acknowledgment of each courtesy must be 
made before midnight, and for once a triumph of etiquette 
must be recorded in the annals of the American legation. 
Minister and secretary went post-haste to thread the 
quaint old lanes where high functionaries have their 
palaces, and told in different salons and in hurried breath 
the thanks of the Government and the hopes of recovery. 
In the meantime the young men of the legation had to 
get up steam to answer questions by letter and telegram. 

Then began that long series of watches for Mr. Blaine's 
telegrams, which came daily, though at all hours of the 
day, and for the revelations of which the reporters of 
Vienna waited at the gates. During the hours and days 
of anxious expectancy that followed, the best of Austria 
never lost their interest, but called or sent to the Chancel- 
lerie of the Empire to get the contents of the latest mes- 
sages from Washington. 

When the September night brought the sad end of it 
all, — the death of the President, — there began the second 
series of diplomatic condolences. There was this differ- 
ence, however, that the Minister had no need to return 



90 William Walter Phelps 

the calls this time. Etiquette again. All the require- 
ments of the occasion were fulfilled by his E.xcellency, 
the Minister, answering promptly and gracefully all who 
chose to offer their condolences in writing. 

With his accustomed care for details and proprieties, 
Minister Phelps addressed a State document to the De- 
partment at Washington, giving a concise report of the 
attitude of the Austrian press on the great tragedy ; the 
sympathy of the Emperor and Empress, the conduct of 
the Foreign Oflfice, the Diplomatic Corps, especially the 
representatives of Great Britain and the Pope. This paper 
was worded as follows : 

Legation of the United States, 
Vienna, July 12, i88r. 
To the Secretary of State, 

Sir : 

A telegraphic message from you to Mr. Minister Lowell 
and by him transmitted to this Legation, where it has just been 
received, gives us such assurance of the President's recovery 
as to encourage me to break the inaction of painful susj)ense. 
And the first wish — after expressing the gratitude and delight 
with which the Legation, in common with all their country- 
men, welcome the good news — is to convey to the Department 
some idea, if it be possible, of the interest and feeling mani- 
fested for the President by this great Empire, its people and 
its government. And it seems to me not inappropriate that 
the archives of the Department should receive and retain some 
formal record of a natural sympathy at once so hearty and so 
universal. 

Under that impression I have taken the liberty of noting in 
this dispatch some few of its more striking features. Horror 
at the deed and anxiety stimulated by the fluctuating char- 
acter of the frecjuent telegrams as to the fate of the victim, 
filled the popular heart. It is true that popular feeling has 
not here so many ways to manifest itself as with us, but all 
were used to give it expression. 

Telegrams of question and sympathy poured into the Lega- 
tion and we were constantly occupied in sending replies, see- 



His Life and Public Services 91 

ing anxious visitors and returning the visits of certain high 
personages with the promptness which diplomatic custom 
enjoins. 

The press gave the news with great fullness, and accom- 
panied it with comments that never failed to be friendly. 
Nor even after the forebodings of a fatal issue were removed, 
was there any reflection that could be construed other than 
friendly, unless the use of the occasion as a text to attack the 
character of our civil service, and the so-called "Stalwart" 
party as responsible for its defects. But in reflections of this 
nature, the Austrian journalists only kept in line with the 
press of the rest of Europe. 

The Austro-Hungarian government, from its august head, 
through all it departments of internal and external administra- 
tion, sought at all hours by note, messenger, or personal call, 
to obtain the latest news and to express continuing interest. 
I had the honor to telegraph the Department that, within a 
few hours after the news of the occurrence reached the conti- 
nent, the Emperor telegraphed from Isehl, where he was visit- 
ing, for all particulars, and soon after by telegram instructed 
Count Wolkenstein to call to ask me to transmit directly to the 
President his Majesty's sympathy and good wishes. 

I may presume to remind the Honorable Secretary, that I 
called his attention at the time of my first interview with the 
Emperor to the singular knowledge his Majesty had of the 
President's history and deep admiration for a character in 
which the conscientious habit of constant labor was the same 
to both Imperial and Republican ruler. Her Imperial Ma- 
jesty was also considerate enough to send distinguished mem- 
bers of her suite for the same purpose. 

These examples were followed by all subjects of conspicuous 
rank in the civil and by many in the military service. 

I transmit herewith a list of some of the more conspicuous 
persons who called during the first day or two to express their 
respectful condolence. 

I noticed that the newspapers here made the remark that 
the attack upon the President was "treated at the Foreign 
Office as an attack upon a legitimate sovereign." I certainly 
have seen nothing omitted by the Minister of Foreign Affairs 



92 William XWilter Phelps 

which would have increased my faith in his sincere sympathy. 
I transmitted to him copies of telegrams, as soon as received, 
and intelligent and appreciative recognition of their changing 
character were promptly returned. 

All the members of the Diplomatic Corps were prompt and 
assiduous in their attentions. 

Were it not invidious, where all had done and expressed so 
much, I should like to express my gratification at the pecu- 
liarly intelligent and sympathetic view of the case taken by the 
Ambassador of her Britannic Majesty and the Nuncio of the 
Pope. Perhaps it was the skill of scholarship that gave such 
delicacy and grace to the words of Monsignore Vanutili, but 
only a heart filled with love for a people among whom he had 
once labored could have given birth to the feelings they 
expressed. 

I trust that all the words of congratulation and cheer which 
have already been exchanged by so many Austrian well- 
wishers for those of sympathy and condolence, to which I 
have referred, may not prove vain, and that the President 
may long live to enjoy the respect and admiration which the 
world has had an occasion to show him. 
I am. Sir, 

Your most obedient servant, 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 

When President Garfield died, after the prolonged suf- 
fering of many days, the American Minister sent to his 
Government a full account of what then took place at 
Vienna, in these words : 

Legation of the United States, 
Vienna, October 13, 1881. 
To the Secretary of State, 
Sir : 

A lull in the varied manifestations in which this Empire has 
sought to show its sympathy in our national bereavement, sug- 
gests the ])ropriety of transmitting to the Department a minute, 
which shall record, however imi)erfectly, some features of the 
strange picture. 

The Legation received the first intelligence of the death of 



His Life and Public Services 93 

President Garfield from Mr. Attorney-General MacVeagh, in 
a brief and informal telegraphic communication. By the 
same method, I promptly imparted the sad news to the Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs. His reply, also telegraphic, promptly 
and heartily expressed his personal sympathy and gave the 
assurance that the people of Austro-Hungary were already 
sharing in the sorrow of the United States. I did not com- 
municate Baron Haymerles' kind assurances to the Depart- 
ment, because in the same telegrams to which I have referred 
he was kind enough to inform me that the Austrian Legation 
at Washington had already been charged to communicate his 
Majesty's sentiments directly to our government. 

Soon after, on receiving from the Secretary of State fuller 
particulars of the President's death, I prepared and sent to the 
Minister of Foreign Affairs a fuller communication, which 
should furnish to the archives of the Empire, to which I have 
the honor to be accredited, formal and ofificial notice that on 
the evening of Monday, September 19th, at ten minutes before 
eleven o'clock, James A. Garfield, President of the United 
States, died at Elberon, New Jersey; that for nearly eighty 
days he suffered great pain and during the entire period ex- 
hibited extraordinary patience, fortitude, and Christian res- 
ignation; and that sorrow throughout the country was deep 
and universal, fifty millions of people standing as mourners by 
his bier. I also announced that President Arthur had already 
qualified and assumed office as his successor. 

By this time the news was generally known throughout this 
vast empire, and from that moment all the resources of the 
Legation have been exhausted in the effort to note and prop- 
erly recognize the various methods in which the different 
nationalities of this composite Empire sought to give sign of 
their sympathy and interest. 

It seemed my first duty to provide some method by which 
our own citizens, brought to Vienna by various chances, might 
meet and solace their sorrow in a common expression and par- 
ticipation. In this distant city, there is generally no American 
colony, indeed the Legation has no record of a single Ameri- 
can family resident here. And yet so penetrating and pervad- 
ing was the idea of nationality, that a notice of little more than 



94 William Walter Phelps 

eighteen hours found among the crowd of passing tourists and 
the young students of our hospitals, enough to fill the German 
Reformed Church, which was kindly and gratuitously offered 
for the use of the meeting. 

The meeting was held Thursday, September 22d, at noon. 
The building was black with the festoons of woe, hung by Aus- 
trian hands that insisted upon the sad privilege. The chancel 
was hid in flowers, and among these surroundings, a band of 
American citizens, in a strange, though friendly land, gathered 
to think of their fatherland and to commemorate its loss. In 
my telegraphic dispatch of September 23d, I had the honor to 
inform the Department of these memorial services and to ex- 
press my gratitude to the distinguished men who by a fortunate 
chance were in the city, and patriotically made a painful effort 
to give voice to the feelings of the occasion. Consul-General 
Weaver called the meeting to order; the American Minister 
presided. Appropriate remarks were made by Mr. Weaver, 
Judge Field of the United States Supreme Court, Whitelaw 
Reid, Charles A. Whitney of New Orleans, Edward King, 
Messrs. Taylor, MacArmor, Gillig, and others. A pleasing 
incident was when Mr. Fraser Rae, who had entered the room 
in company with Edward Jenkins, rose and asked that he 
might in behalf of Englishmen speak of the universal sorrow 
as one in which they claimed a share as kinsfolk. Resolutions 
were passed, a copy of which is hereto annexed. Other copies, 
initially engrossed on parchment, have been sent to His Ma- 
jesty the Emperor and to Mrs. Garfield. The meeting was 
closed with prayer, led by the Pastor of the Church, in obedi- 
ence to the custom, which from the foundation of our govern- 
ment has prevailed in solemn gatherings of American citizens. 

In the meantime ajijjropriate resolutions had been passed by 
Vienna and other municipalities; and since by the Diets of the 
.various principalities composing this Empire. Some were pre- 
sented in person, but more were transmitted in writing by the 
Presidents and Burgomasters of the respective corporations. 
All expressed similar sentiments of horror at the assassin's 
deed, regret for its results, and sympathy for the country and 
family deprived of their head. I noticed with peculiar jiride 
many cases in which the loss was admitted to be not solelv that 



His Life and Public Services 95 

of a Republic that lost a great ruler, but that of the world that 
lost a great and good man. Styria, Silesia, and Nuder Oester- 
reich are some of the historic names which I recall with pleas- 
ure as those of peoples whose local parliaments were among 
the promptest to take official cognizance. In many cases, to 
add dignity to the act, the parliamentary confirmation was by 
a standing vote. 

One of the earliest telegrams received was read to the In- 
ternational Literary Congress, then holding its sessions in this 
city, and amid manifestations of great sorrow, the session was 
adjourned for the day. But not these conspicuous honors, 
not the march of Emperor and nobles, of cities and parlia- 
ments as they wheeled into the world's funeral procession, 
were signs so touching and significant as the voices that came 
from humble Austrian homes. 

To hear their utterance of spontaneous grief, sometimes in 
letter sadly lacking of pencraft but rich in eloquent feeling, 
sometimes in telegram, with careful and studied use of this 
unwonted method, sometimes from the lips of a man poor and 
illiterate, who came boldly to the Legation's Chambers, know- 
ing that every man was there welcome who came to si)eak ten- 
derly of an American President, this was a proud privilege 
which did not fail to soften the bitterness of my personal grief. 

It was not official, but no single utterance of sorrow from 
foreign lips was more tender and comforting than a few lines 
from Julius Hubner, the president of the Dresden School of 
Fine Arts. An old man, famous in both continents, he had 
laid down his brush and seized his pen to tell how Art, too, 
joined in the general mourning. 

Nor should I fail to call attention to the interest felt and 
expressed by our business population. This has been so 
marked in the experience of Mr. Consul-General Weaver that 
he has formally called my attention to it in a letter, a copy of 
which is enclosed. 

I have mentioned only the incidents connected with the 
President's death and peculiar to it, or at least, not noticed by 
me in the early days of July, when Austro-Hungary joined 
with us in celebrating the probable restoration of General 
Garfield to health. 



96 William Walter Phelps 

All the methods and incidents then used to show national 
interest and sympathy were again in activity. The press tilled 
its columns with the news and with comments of sense and 
feeling. The diplomatic corps called or left cards, also many 
officials and nobles of the higher rank. But I made at the 
time so full mention of all these incidents in my dispatch No. 
8 that I need not recall them, but beg leave to say in brief, 
that nothing was left undone that could show the deep feeling 
of this great Empire, a feeling which made it akin with the 
world. 

I have the honor to be, Sir, 

Your most obedient servant, 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 

At the meeting of Americans in Vienna, called to ex- 
press their sorrow at the death of the President, Minister 
Phelps, on taking the chair, said : 

General Garfield is dead. A nation mourns for its chief 
magistrate and the world for a good man. It is proper that 
a little band of Americans happening to be in this distant 
capital should assemble to commemorate such a sad loss. We 
have changed our skies but not our hearts — the sky is Aus- 
trian, the heart American. We are caught by the circuit of 
national sympathy which to-day is experienced by ;ill .\merican 
wanderers, and connects them with fifty millions of their coun- 
trymen who in their own land stand by the grave of a mur- 
dered President. With them let us mourn for our country, 
but not as those without hope. The life of the nation is above 
and beyond that of any citizen. A bullet may kill James Gar- 
field, but the institutions which nourished him are immortal. 
Never can they die until we forget the epitome of Republican 
duty which Rome formulated but could not follow, or we de- 
spair of the Republic, and (owardly let it receive detriment. 

As soon as it was known that President Garfield was 
dead, steps were promptly taken in Republican financial 
circles to raise a fund for his faniil\-, u hich was not pro- 
vided with abundance for their future. Hearing of this, 



His Life and Public Services 97 

Mr. Phelps sent to the Chamber of Commerce, New 
York, a telegram in these words : 

Death has removed all danger of misconstruction. Let me 
subscribe five thousand dollars to the Garfield fund. 

When Mr. Garfield's funeral ceremonies were over, Mr. 
Phelps at once telegraphed to the State Department at 
Washington his resignation of the Austrian mission. 
He believed that the new President, Mr. Arthur, should 
be left entirely untrammelled to select his own foreign 
ministers. The post in the first instance was conferred 
upon Mr. Phelps without his solicitation and unex- 
pectedly. He accepted it reluctantly and wholly out of 
consideration for President Garfield, who was his personal 
friend, and with whom he had served in Congress. The 
appointment was not suggested by Secretary Blaine, but 
came directly from the President. The diplomatic and 
business relations between the United States and Austria 
were not of such weight and prominence as to give the 
representative of our Government at the Austrian Court 
matters of serious importance to consider. It was not to 
Mr. Phelps's taste to serve as ambassador to a Court 
where there was much etiquette and little serious diplo- 
matic work. There was a supposition that Mr. Arthur 
would be a candidate for the presidential nomination in 
1884, and Mr. Phelps knew that it was the intention of 
Mr. Blaine's followers to nominate him for the Presidency 
that year in spite of all obstacles. In this movement, 
Mr. Phelps expected to take a foremost part. Conse- 
quently, if he retained his mission, he would be placed 
politically in an unpleasant antagonism to his chief. 
Further, Mr. Arthur had been a protege of Roscoe Conk- 
ling, and the inference was a fair one that under the new 
regime at Washington there would exist a political anti- 
pathy to the admirers of Mr. Blaine. Therefore to re- 
lieve himself and the President of all embarrassment, Mr. 
Phelps very judiciously, and with gladness, asked to be 



98 William Walter Phelps 

relieved from his ministerial duties as soon as his successor 
could conveniently reach Vienna and assume the duties of 
the position. President Arthur received the resignation 
in the same friendly and courteous manner with which it 
was tendered, and the incident did not produce the slight- 
est personal coolness between these two distinguished 
men who had for years enjoyed each other's friendship. 

Judge Alonzo Taft, who succeeded to the Austrian 
mission, did not reach Vienna until a year after Mr. 
Phelps had resigned. In the meantime, the latter had 
become highly popular at Vienna, not only with the Im- 
perial Government, but with the foreign ambassadors. 
He was the youngest of all the plenipotentiaries at the 
Austrian Court, but with his public experience at home 
and the knowledge he had acquired through his acquaint- 
ance with government affairs gained in foreign travel, he 
was the equal of any of the foreign representatives at 
Vienna in all that pertained to diplomacy. Many of his 
friends and acquaintances who happened to be travelling 
in Europe found their way to Vienna to meet his hearty 
welcome and enjoy his company. He gave the utmost 
care to the comfort and entertainment of American 
guests, gave elegant dinners to the officials of the govern- 
ment and the nobility, and the gay society of Vienna 
found him a very desirable accessory. He received in 
return conspicuous social and official attention. The 
Emperor invited him to a private dinner, and he was a 
distinguished guest at a banquet given by the Emperor 
to the English, American, and Italian ambassadors. A 
visit of the King and Queen of Italy to the Emperor of 
Austria made that a time of banquets, receptions, balls, 
concerts, dazzle, and Court etiquette. At a royal recep- 
tion King Humbert had a long talk in French with our 
Minister, and Queen Margherita addressed Mrs. Phelps in 
English and told her how pleased she was with some of 
the American magazines for young people and said that 
she had her son read them. 



His Life and Public Services 99 

A little later, Minister Phelps travelled for a short time 
in Germany and Austria, in aid of his investigations into 
the local governments of Austria, and his studies of the 
history of the smaller governments of which the great 
German Empire is composed. Then came a tour to 
Greece, Turkey, and Sicily, and finally his travels for the 
winter were concluded with a visit to Egypt and a trip up 
the Nile, His diary at this time is replete with records 
of the thoughts that were awakened in his mind by the 
scenes, the history, and the marvels of these old and in- 
teresting lands. At Palermo, where Garibaldi first landed 
to drive the Bourbon dynasty from Naples, and to carry 
unity and a liberal government to all Italy, he made this 
comment upon the great liberator: 

The world was his country; to do good his religion. Gen- 
erous impulse more attractive than discreet service. Italy 
needed an example of unselfish enthusiasm, not statecraft. 
He was like a religious leader in the hold he had upon the 
people, reckless of any alteration in events. Italy looked up 
to him as the French did to Jeanne d' Arc. 

At Constantinople, accompanied by the United States 
Minister to Turkey, General Lew Wallace, Minister 
Phelps was honored by being invited to inspect the Sul- 
tan's treasure in the vaults of the imperial treasury. This 
is regarded as a high compliment which is only vouch- 
safed to visitors of exalted rank. This collection of gold, 
silver, and precious stones in great variety has been 
looked upon as one of the wonders of the East, notwith- 
standing the reputed poverty of the Turkish Government. 

At Cairo the American Minister was received with 
honor by the Khedive, with whom he conversed, the 
Egyptian potentate inquiring closely into our methods of 
government. The Minister was a guest at a great ban- 
quet given on Washington's Birthday by our Consul- 
General to Egypt and the American gentlemen who had 
been stopping at Cairo through the winter. The entire 



^ 



loo William Walter Phelps 

Egyptian Cabinet was present. The Consul-General of 
the United States presided. On his right was Minister 
Phelps, and next to him the Prime Minister of the 
Khedive, and opposite the famous Arabi Bey, Minister 
of War. Speeches were made in English, French, and 
Arabic. The Rev. Dr. H. M. Field of New York, who 
was present, wrote to the newspaper of which he was 
editor: "The last speech was by Minister Phelps, who 
mingled wit and wisdom in such a way as to put every- 
body in the happiest mood, and formed a pleasant close 
to the entertainment." A new Khedive had been re- 
cently installed in power and his government just organ- 
ized. Mr. Phelps in his speech referred to the late 
unsettled condition of Egypt and expressed the belief 
that "the man was now in position who would guide the 
ship of state safely through the troubled waters." The 
Egyptian authorities seem to have noted this compli- 
ment, for Minister Phelps, on his return to Cairo, wrote 
on March i8th to a friend in New Jersey: 

Down the river from Arabia and in a sea of accumulated 
letters. As I sat on a sofa to-day with the Khedive the same 
as I would with you, I was rather delicately reminded that I 
had made a forceful speech on Washington's birthday. This 
accounted for something that had surprised me, for all the 
way up the Nile I had banquets and illuminations, and salutes, 
and no end of speech-making. I now go to Beirut — Dodge's 
College — then Constantinople, Vienna, Carlsbad, and home, 
and the Congressional nomination if so it be. 

After Mr. Phelps returned from his tour in the Turkish 
provinces, he made a written report to the State Depart- 
ment of what he learned of the conditions of trade and 
commerce in the East, as they affected business relations 
with the United States, and he dwelt upon the influence 
of American education in developing among Oriental 
nations a high regard for our country and everything 
bearing its name. This statement referred particularly 



His Life and Public Services loi 

to the work of the American colleges on the Bosphorus 
and in Syria, and the educational labors of our mission- 
aries. 

Release from his ministerial functions came at last to 
Mr. Phelps by the arrival in June, 1882, of his successor, 
who was at once presented to the Emperor, to whom Mr. 
Phelps's letter of recall was delivered. This document 
was written in the high and mighty style of such State 
papers and read : 

Chester A. Arthur, 

President of the United States of America, 

To His Imperial and Royal Majesty 

Francis Joseph, 

Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, and 

Apostolic King of Hungary. 

Great and Good Friend : 

Mr. William Walter Phelps, who has for some time past 
resided near the government of Your Majesty in the character 
of Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the 
United States, having been at his own request recalled, and 
being about to return to his country, I have directed him to 

take leave of 

Your Majesty. 

Mr. Phelps, whose standing instructions have been to culti- 
vate with Your Majesty's government, relations of the closest 
friendship, has been directed to convey to Your Majesty, upon 
his leaving Austria-Hungary, the assurance of our sincere de- 
sire to strengthen the friendly feeling now happily subsisting 
between the two Governments. The zeal with which he has 
fulfilled his former instructions leaves us no doubt that he will 
carry out this, his last commission, in a manner agreeable to 
Your Majesty. 

Written at Washington, this 8th day of May in the year 1882. 

Chester A. Arthur. 
By the President. 

Fredk. T. Frelinghuvsen, 
Secretary of State. 



I02 William Walter Phelps 

The late Minister informed the State Department that 
his successor had assumed the duties of his office, and 
with the courtliness that was natural to him, expressed 
his thanks to the Department for "uniform courtesy and 
assistance." This ended his official duties as Minister to 
Austria. 



CHAPTER X 

Discovers the Resting-Place of His Ancestor, John Phelps, at Vevey, 
Switzerland — Erects a Tablet to His Memory — Letter to His 
Children 

WHILE Mr. Phelps was living in Vienna, he em- 
braced an opportunity to do honor to a renowned 
personage of the ancient Phelps stock in England, from 
which he descended. 

John Phelps, brother of William Phelps, who was the 
first of that name to come to this country, and was the 
founder of the Phelps family that was settled at Simsbury, 
Connecticut, was the private secretary of Oliver Crom- 
well, and also clerk of the court which, tried Charles I. 
Upon the restoration of the Stuarts, he had to leave his 
home, with others who took part in the trial and con- 
demnation of the King, and until recent years no trace of 
his subsequent whereabouts could be found. During his 
service at the Austrian Court, William Walter Phelps on 
several occasions exhibited his faith in republicanism in 
a manner that attracted the attention of other European 
capitals and the European press. Consequently some of 
these newspaper reports were seen by the secretary of the 
British Museum, and that official thought he saw in the 
character of the independent American diplomat some- 
thing similar to the prominent characteristics of Crom- 
well's clerk. He therefore rather more than suspected 
that Minister Phelps was a descendant of the family of 
the illustrious John Phelps, and he wrote to the American 

103 



I04 William Walter Phelps 

Minister, pointing out this resemblance. Then Rev. 
William Prior, at that time rector of the little Episcopal 
church at Vevey, Switzerland, heard of this correspon- 
dence between the American diplomat and the English 
secretary, and he wrote to the former that the remains 
of John Phelps were interred at St. Martin's Lutheran 
Church at that place. Minister Phelps had a careful in- 
vestigation made, which satisfied him of this fact, and he 
applied to the authorities of the church for the privilege 
of marking with a handsome tablet the resting-place of 
the sturdy old Puritan. It seems that others of the 
tribunal that sentenced King Charles to death found a 
refuge at Vevey and were buried at this same quaint old 
church, and among them were Broughton and General 
Ludlow. The last named had put his name to the death- 
warrant of Charles and was one of the most illustrious of 
the parliamentary soldiers and statesmen in the revolt 
against that monarch. It is written that some of the 
refugees were a little timid over the record they had made 
in their native land, but Clerk Phelps was not. He was 
so proud of his participation in the trial of the King, and 
so willing that it should be known, that he wrote his 
name in full wherever it could be properly done all over 
the minutes and on all the papers of the trial. His fate 
as a refugee apparently was not a very hard one, and the 
end of Lake Geneva, where Vevey is situated, is not a 
bad place to live, and for that matter, to die in, after a 
man has done enorigh to justify his having been born, 
and the presumption is that old John Phelps had this 
feeling to the end. 

The request of Minister Phelps was graciously acceded 
to by those in charge of tiic church, who very kindly dis- 
placed the record of some one not distinguished for aid- 
ing to put out of the way a bad King, so that the Phelps 
marble could be placed next to that of the heroic General 
Ludlow in the walls of the old church. It bears the fol- 
lowing inscription : 



His Life and Public Services 105 

In Memoriam 
of him who, being with Andrew Broughton joint clerk of 

the court 
which tried and condemned Charles the First of 

England 

had such zeal to accept the full responsibility of his act 

that he signed each record with his full name, 

John Phelps. 

He came to Vevey, and died, like the associates whose 

memorials 
are about us, an exile in the cause of human freedom. 



This stone is placed at the request of 

Wm. Walter Phelps, of New Jersey, and 

Charles A. Phelps, of Massachusetts, 

descendants from across the seas. 

Subsequently Mr. Phelps received from the secretary 
of the British Museum a copy of a print made at the time 
of the royal trial, in which John Phelps is represented 
sitting at the table in front and to the left of the presid- 
ing officer. The drawing was said to have been made by 
an eye-witness of the trial named Pye. This picture was 
hung in the Phelps library at Teaneck. As a companion 
to this picture, Mr, Phelps had another Avhich was painted 
by Javurck, the best historical painter in Bohemia, and 
was presented to him when he resigned the Austrian mis- 
sion by the American Consuls to Austria, as an apprecia- 
tion of his gentle sway over them. The latter mementos 
were lost in the disastrous fire which destroyed the famous 
Teaneck mansion in 1888. 

Having paid a generous and proper tribute to the 
liberty-loving old Englishman of his name, Mr. Phelps 
penned the following letter to his children : 

Vienna, April 25, 1S82. 
My dear Children: 

This solemn address does n't spring from the solemnity of 
my subject, but because our English tongue gives no less formal 



io6 William Walter Phelps 

style in which to group you when I don't want to rehearse all 
your names. Here is a copy for each of you of a little photo- 
graph that tells its own story. It represents a monumental 
tablet just put into the wall of old St. Martin's Church in 
Vevey, Switzerland, at my 'expense. The inscription tells 
pretty much the whole story that has any interest for us now. 
He was clerk of the memorable court that tried and beheaded 
Charles Stuart. He did his part with proud conscientious- 
ness and had so noble a courage of his opinions that while he 
might have discharged his duty less conspicuously and have 
escaped in comparative insignificance terrible responsibility, he 
courted it and certified with needless frequency, and on every 
occasion, each proceeding of that august tribunal, with his full 
name in bold hand, " John Phelps." 

I think we know all the intervening links between him and 
us. And in what (juiet churchyards in our own and our 
mother country they all now sleep; the most, I think, in our 
own Simsbury, the line of grandfathers to the sixth remove. 
Exiled upon the return of the Stuarts, this John Phelps disap- 
peared from his home in Tewksbur}', and from the eyes of his 
descendants. By chance, during my residence here, I heard 
that with Ludlow, Broughton, Gove, and other regicides, he 
fled to the shelter of the Swiss republic and ended his life by 
the waters of the placid Leman in the little village of Vevey. 
And now these actors in that stormy scene sleep together far 
from the country where their bold deed made constitutional 
liberty a sure British possession. The tablet of our ancestor 
is next to Ludlow's. I caused Mr. Charles A. Phelps's name 
to be associated with mine in the inscription, because to his 
loyal zeal in research I owed the discovery. Besides he is a 
worthy descendant of the worthy regicide and has himself done 
good service to the state. I send with this a letter of his, 
written upon receipt of one of the photographs, which shows 
at once the singular sweetness of his nature and a few of his 
graceful accomplishments. 

Not knowing how heartily I am a democrat at heart, believ- 
ing unreservedly in the equal rights of all men, and that posi- 
tion and honor should be awarded to each according to his 
own character and achievements, you may wonder at the 




C^SK > ^^.vX .^ ^ >■ 




His Life and Public Services 107 

pleasure I experienced in finding and putting into our lineage 
an ancestor more than two centuries dead. I admit a warm 
pride in my ancestry and do not see that it is at all inconsistent 
with these political sentiments. I am proud of my ancestors 
because they were all honest and useful men, who loved their 
country, and in their stations — often humble ones — did their 
duty. And the recollection of these virtues, which form a 
family inheritance of great value, is a pledge, in a certain 
sense, for the good behavior of their descendants. When a 
man has such hostages given for his conduct, it is an induce- 
ment to keep him in the path of honor. Often a man would 
be desperate enough to stain his own record, and yet hesitate at 
the thought that the stain would trickle upon and stain his 
forefathers." So every man who had good ancestors should 
cherish and cultivate their memory. 

Your affectionate father, 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 



CHAPTER XI 

Urged to Again Enter Congress — Pathetic Letter to a Friend — Consents to 
Be a Candidate — Elected to the Forty-Eighth Congress, after a 
Vigorous Campaign, over a Popular Opponent 

AS soon as Mr. Phelps sent to Washington, in 1881, 
the resignation of his Austrian commission, letters 
began to be showered upon him by his political admirers 
at home, and from the most influential party men of his 
district, insisting that they should be permitted to an- 
nounce him as a Republican candidate for Congress in 
the election of the following year. He remained a con- 
stant martyr to ill health, and while abroad he had 
made up his mind no longer to pursue a public career — 
to forego politics, except so far as he might be able to 
assist Mr. Blaine to the next Republican presidential 
nomination, and it was with the latter view only that he 
was keeping a close watch upon political afTairs in New 
Jersey. For himself, he had a wish to go back to his 
ample estate at Teaneck, and settle down permanently to 
the life of a country gentleman, and for diversion going 
back to his first love — the law, the successful practice of 
which, circumstances some years before had compelled 
him reluctantly to relinquish. He thought he would like 
to resume the study of legal and economic questions and 
write upon them for law journals and periodicals which 
made a specialty of such literature. But under the im- 
portunities of his confidential friends and old political 
associates who had stood by him so loyally, he began to 
have doubts as to which was his duty. While in this 

108 



His Life and Public Services 109 

frame of mind, he wrote from Vienna, in Januar>', 1882, 
to one in his district whom he knew had his best interests 
at heart and who was a representative of a circle of his 
truest friends, the following: 

You ask what are my plans. They are uncertain, as must 
always be the plans of a man with no better health than I. 
This is most likely to be the result. My successor to get here 
— say in March. I would travel until May. Then May and 
June to Carlsbad, getting home say about July loth. This 
can be altered — only if nothing to alter it, Carlsbad ought to 
be taken, for it does me undoubted good. 

If I sink my preferences and go again into politics, then I 
do it only upon your express understanding to run the machine. 
By this I mean you and others must tell me what to do in the 
active work and I will do it. This is for two reasons. First, 
I 've no confidence of my scent in practical politics. Second, 
while you need n't tell Mrs. Phelps, I 've such a wretched body, 
even at the best, that there is very little work or go in me. 
This lack or weakness affects me more in the inclination than 
in the execution ; so that while I would sit still and do nothing, 
if I waited for my own suggestion, yet if I were prompted to 
something, I could still pick up and do it with some force. 
Therefore, if you want to enter such a spavined colt, do it, 
knowing you must jockey the run. Again, because of this 
lack of physical stamina for aggressive and continuous political 
effort, I want to let the United States Senatorship, for which 
my name has been suggested, drift. If you decide to enter 
me for the Congressional race, then inform me. I shall leave 
it to my friends when, how, and to whom to make the an- 
nouncement — or no announcement at all. You can manage 
everything as you see best. But it will be better for my health 
if I can spend the summer at Carlsbad. 

Here were breathed the pathetic yearnings of a robust 
mind in a frail body, and scarcely hidden in all is the 
saddened belief of the man in his innermost soul that, 
hampered as he was, he still had in him capacity for 
great work for his country and mankind. It was not Mr. 



1 lo William Walter Phelps 

Phelps's habit to make plaint of his bodily infirmities, 
therefore it should be kept in mind that this was a private 
letter to a most confidential political friend and adviser 
at a crisis which was likely to be a turning point in the 
writer's political fortunes. Mr. Phelps correctly diag- 
nosed his own case. When his mental energies "^yere 
awakened to an arduous task, so intense would be his de- 
sire to accomplish it that his physical inertness would 
seem temporarily to vanish and his force of execution 
become truly marvellous, and this would continue day 
after day, until the work in hand was finished. No one 
could ever perform more vigorous and persistent mental 
labor when he was once aroused to its necessity. After 
the date of the rather despairing letter just quoted, he 
did some of his greatest work in statesmanship and diplo- 
macy, and his achievements stand forth conspicuously in 
the history of two continents. 

Those who knew Mr. Phelps best sincerely believed 
that with his active mind, and at his age, he would chafe 
in retirement, even to a point of danger, and that his 
health would be likely to be better and his life prolonged 
by active employment in public life, a sphere for which 
he had such eminent fitness. They consequently resolved 
that the Rubicon should be crossed, and word was sent 
that when he should come home he must expect to face 
a Congressional canvass which would be managed and 
made as easy for him as possible. He then wrote to the 
recipient of his former letter: 

I will sail for home on the Elbe, August 30th. I choose that 
date because I get very eager to see Teaneck before the frost 
can possibly take the leaves from the trees which have two 
years' growth for me to see. 

It was always the trees of Teaneck. 

This entry is found in his diary: "1220 steerage pas- 
sengers. Two babies died. Reached New York 8 A.M., 
Saturday, 9th of September." 



His Life and Public Services 1 1 1 

The primary elections for delegates to the Congres- 
sional convention were called soon after Mr. Phelps 
reached home. John Hill was again a candidate. He 
had supporters who used all their endeavors to have dele- 
gates elected who were favorable to him in Passaic County 
and in his own county of Morris. In the latter he ob- 
tained most of the delegates. The Hill interest in Pater- 
son was aided by one or two disappointed office-seekers, 
whose enmity originated during Mr. Phelps's first term in 
Congress. He met also the antagonism of a small body 
of Republican silk manufacturers, who were alleged to 
have had a grievance against him on a point of etiquette 
growing out of an occurrence when they went as a com- 
mittee to Washington on one occasion when he was hav- 
ing his first Congressional experience. Their efforts at 
the primary meeting were futile, and Mr. Phelps obtained 
almost the entire body of delegates from Bergen and 
Passaic counties, and his nomination was made in the 
convention without difficulty. The successful candidate 
did not attend the convention, so that its choice could 
be entirely free from any influence his presence might 
create. He was informed of his nomination by a com- 
mittee and in response to their written notification he 
said : 

I have received the kind letter in which you communicate 
to me the honor which the Fifth New Jersey Congressional 
District Republican Convention have done me, in unanimously 
nominating me as their candidate for Congress. 

And 1 find enclosed a copy of the resolutions which the 
Convention adopted as the sense of the party in tiic District. 

I accept the nomination so generously offered without solici- 
tation or effort on my part. I did not think it right to seek it, 
but I should think it wrong, after receiving it, to omit any 
honorable effort to secure an election. 

Striving to follow the example of the young men of the Dis- 
trict, to whom I am informed I owe in a great measure my 
present position, I shall immediately begin a personal canvass, 



112 William Walter Phelps 

in the hope of meeting in each school district the people, 
whose interests I seek the opportunity to represent. The 
frankness with which in an earlier Congressional experience, 
I expressed my sentiments on most national issues, and the 
industry with which friendly and unfriendly papers, during 
the succeeding years, have canvassed any public expression I 
have since had occasion to make of them, renders it unneces- 
sary for me to do more, than to say that I still advocate: 

A fair, free, and full election everywhere, no matter which 
party it helps or hurts. 

A reform of the Civil Service which shall make the tenure 
of office, during the term of appointment, co-eval with the ca- 
pacity and honesty of the office-holder. 

A watch over the Public Treasury which shall guard its 
money, its lands, all its assets against private and corporate 
assault. 

An improvement of the currency, so that no creditor shall 
be forced to receive any dollar worth less than a dollar in gold. 

And protection, in the interest of labor, for our young and 
varied industries. 

On reading your platform, I see nothing in it at variance 
with these my life-long sentiments, and nothing therefore 
which I cannot approve and work for. 

The Democrats, thinking to create a factional diversion 
in the Republican ranks through the disaffection of the 
combination of Paterson silk manufacturers, nominated 
for Congress John Ryle, a leading silk manufacturer, who 
had once been a Republican, and as such, Mayor of 
Paterson. He learned the business of a silk fabricator 
in his native England, emigrated to Paterson when 
young, and there became the pioneer of the silk industry 
in this country. He was English in build, manners, 
speech, and force of character, but withal a patriotic 
American and enterprising and most widel}" known citi- 
zen, respected as a man for his intelligence and integrity, 
lie was well along in \-cars and his ambition was stimu- 
lated by the suggestion that he should round out his life, 



His Life and Public Services 113 

as the saying is, with a term in Congress. The silk 
manufacturers largely rallied to Mr. Ryle's support and 
contributed liberally to his election fund. A Prohibition 
candidate, in the person of a popular Methodist minister, 
was also put in the field, whose candidacy could only 
divert votes from the Republican nominee. Altogether 
the opposition to Mr. Phelps seemed to be a formidable 
one. But his campaign was being managed by confi- 
dential advisers who knew the district, the temper of the 
voters, and their confidence and pride in Mr. Phelps, and 
these managers never for a moment believed that with 
the canvass the Republican candidate was making, defeat 
was possible. Mr. Phelps seconded the efforts of his 
friends industriously and energetically. He met and 
talked with the people of the three counties in their 
homes and at all kinds of gatherings. His pleasant and 
unaffected manner gained for him a cordial reception 
among all classes and made him more popular than ever. 
At a great mass meeting held in the Opera House, Pater- 
son, October 24th, the Republican nominee for Congress 
began his speech in these words : 

Eight years ago, after the tidal wave that had swept seven- 
teen Republican States from their moorings and made it almost 
an act of heroism to vote the Republican ticket; in the face 
of a long and heated canvass; after earnest efforts had been 
made to bury me under the odium of wealth and prosperity; 
in the face of persistent efforts to turn every humorous allusion, 
in what they are pleased to term my witty speeches, and every 
kindly word in which a young representative expressed his 
cordial regard for a most partial constituency, into words of 
arrogance and contempt; with the hostile newspapers holding 
in standing proof at the head of their columns extracts from 
speeches skilfully selected and printed so as to pervert their 
meaning — what was the result? This district gave me one 
thousand votes more than a popular R.epublican candidate for 
Governor. A thousand independent men left their party 
ranks for the purpose of stamping their reprobation on such 



114 William Walter Phelps 

injustice. This was the answer which the people gave to 
these old slanders eight years ago — and the answer was so 
emphatic, that I shall not attempt to improve it. And this, 
gentlemen, is the only personal allusion I shall make this 
evening, and I make it now, because this is my first oppor- 
tunity to thank the loyal city of Paterson for the conspicuous 
part it took then. 

He then proceeded to make an exposition of the posi- 
tion held by the respective parties on the tariff question, 
showing in his most concise style the danger that would 
threaten the protective industries of Paterson from a 
Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. 
This address had a damaging effect upon the Democratic 
campaign. 

The Democratic leaders knew what the success of Mr. 
Phelps at this time would mean — the loss of the district 
to them probably so long as he might be a candidate, and 
they did not intend, if they could by any means prevent 
it, that he should gain another foothold in Congress. 
For this reason the contest became, in some measure, 
of national importance. The Democratic press attacked 
Mr. Phelps most venomously and endeavored to rouse a 
prejudice against him in the ranks of labor because he was 
a rich man, notwithstanding his Democratic opponent 
was also a man of wealth. These tactics were always 
used against him in all his campaigns, but it was never 
perceptible that this sort of arraignment was ever suc- 
cessful in drawing away from him the votes of the wage- 
workers. He had an amazing popularity with that class 
from first to last. 

The colored voters who had opposed him in 1874, be- 
cause he voted against the Civil Rights Bill, had come to 
realize their mistake and now gave him a hearty and al- 
most unanimous support. The campaign was conducted 
up to the very eve of the election with unceasing vigilance 
and energy. It was plain to close observers, two weeks 
before the voting, what the result would probably be, but 



His Life and Public Services 115 

those who had the Republican cause in hand meant that 
the victory should be such an overwhelming one that it 
would discourage and stamp out all future factional oppo- 
sition by the Republican followers of Mr. Ryle, and when 
the time came such a victory was won. 

It is but fair to say that the silk manufacturers who 
opposed Mr. Phelps at this election were afterwards 
among his warmest and most effective supporters. 

The counting of the votes disclosed that Mr. Phelps 
had run ahead of his ticket in all the counties of the dis- 
trict, as he had done in his previous contests. Bergen 
County, although it remained a Democratic stronghold, 
gave him a handsome plurality. In Passaic County, the 
average Republican plurality was but 288; that of Mr. 
Phelps 639. In the whole district the general Democratic 
ticket had an aggregate plurality of 357, but the total 
majority of Phelps over Ryle was 1638. This victory, 
under all the circumstances, was one that Mr. Phelps and 
the Republicans had good reason to be proud of, and 
again, for the third time, the result at the polls afforded 
undoubted proof of the confidence and respect of the 
great mass of the voters of the Fifth District of New 
Jersey for the distinguished citizen of Bergen County. 



CHAPTER XII 

His Road-Building around Teaneck — His Offers to Englewood Start the 
"Good Roads" Movement in Bergen County and over a Million 
Dollars is Spent as a Result 

IT would be more than a year from the date of the 
election to the opening of the new Congress in which 
Mr. Phelps would be a member. This interim gave him 
a coveted opportunity to devote considerable time to the 
development of his large property in Bergen County, and 
to enhance the beauty and add to the conveniences of his 
homestead acres, where he was making improvements 
without a parallel in individual enterprise in the State. 
He devised and carried out plans of road-making which 
created a network of thoroughfares throuijh his whole 
estate. He did not confine his enterprise to his own 
lands, but labored to have his neighbors enjoy the benefits 
of his progressive ideas, and as a consequence he became 
the pioneer of good roads in Bergen County. 

When he came to New Jersey the roads were noted for 
red mud in some sections and deep sand in others. He 
immediately set about creating a sentiment for public 
road improvement. He attended meetings of road boards 
in his own and neighboring districts, and urged macadam- 
izing instead of expensive dirt road repairs which never 
resulted in lasting benefit. When his persuasion began 
to show an influence and the voters authorized what to 
them appeared to be liberal appropriations, Mr. Phelps 
stepped in with an offer to duplicate any additional sum 
they would name. This practice was kept up to the end 

Ii6 



His Life and Public Services 117 

of his life, and an example of his persistent and generous 
encouragement to road-making is given in the following 
letter: 

Berlin, January 22, 1891. 
To THE Citizens of Englewood: 

In my recent visit to my home, I had great pleasure in see- 
ing everywhere the signs of progress. I do not want to see it 
stop. In the hope of encouraging this spirit of improvement, 
I respectfully submit the following offers: 

1. I will give one-third of the amount necessary to buy, on 
the west side of the station at Englewood, the land necessary 
to make a park corresponding to that already made on the east 
side. 

2. I will give one-third of the amount necessary to buy a 
steam roller for our road-making. 

3. I will give one-third of the amount necessary to be raised 
by popular subscription to secure the new station at Linden 
Avenue or Railroad Avenue: — Either situation seems to me a 
fit one. 

4. I will pay half of the expense necessary to dredge the 
canal, which is the main channel of our sewerage. As this 
offer was rejected last year, although this work is admittedly 
necessary to the health of Englewood, I can think of but one 
reason. I am ashamed to mention it, but answer it by saying 
that a moment's inspection will show that I have constructed 
ditches on both sides of the canal, by which my low lands are 
drained whether the canal be deepened or not. 

5. I will pay one-half of the expense necessary to macadamize 
Cedar Lane from the track of the West Shore Road to the 
Hackensack River. 

6. I will give one-half of the cost of a village monument to 
our dead soldiers, on the lines laid down by Col. John D. 
Sherwood, if in it the claims to honor of James Harrison 
Dwight, priest and soldier, be conspicuously represented. 

Wm. Walter Phelps, of Teaneck. 

This method inspired the people of adjoining districts 
to engage in friendly rivalry in stone road-building, and 
as they were giving to the limit of their taxable ability, 



ii8 William Walter Phelps 

there was no feeling of dependence upon their generous 
neighbor. 

The recognized influence of an object lesson, especially 
upon the public, was soon manifested on all sides. The 
fine hard and dry roads of Englewood township (of 
which Teaneck township was then a part) spread rapidly 
throughout Bergen County, and it has ever since shown 
a larger expenditure for macadamized highways, without 
State aid, than any rural county in New Jersey. The 
total expenditure for building roads in the county since 
the work was started in Englewood exceeds a million 
dollars, all cheerfully voted by taxpayers who were edu- 
cated up to the idea by the one influence. 

Of thirty miles of road on the Teaneck estate, about 
eight miles are macadamized, the other portion being 
dirt or grass roads. These included Sheffield Avenue, 
from the mansion to NordhofT; the Diagonal road from 
the residence to Englewood; West Englewood road, 
from the residence to West Englewood; Hackensack 
road, from the residence to the Hackensack River; Ben- 
nett road, from the residence to Englewood; Demarest 
road, three miles long, from the residence east through 
the woods, and the Fyke, then south over hills, and down 
near the West Shore road, connecting with nearly all 
other roads to North Cedar Lane. 

In addition to these principal roads, dirt and grass 
roads extend throughout the estate in every direction, 
arranged with such system as to make access to all parts 
of the estate easy. Miss I'helps was fond of horseback 
riding through the woods, and her father spared no pains 
to cut wide and widening bridle-j^aths through the most 
deeply shaded woodlands, that she might, as he hoped, 
be always able there to indulge in her favorite exercise 
and pastime. 

One of the most important of Mr. Phelps's contributions 
to road-building is Cedar Lane, connecting Teaneck road 
with Hackensack at Anderson Street bridge. This was 



His Life and Public Services 119 

originally the crudest imaginable thoroughfare, over which 
traffic was possible with any degree of safety only under 
the most favorable weather conditions. Mr. Phelps 
widened it and cut down steep grades, filled in the de- 
pressions and macadamized it, making one of the finest 
highways in the vicinity. The outlay for this two miles 
of work was $35,000, the figures indicating the extent and 
thoroughness of the work. 

The difficulty of obtaining stone during the earlier 
period of this road-building enterprise was such that Mr. 
Phelps had to adopt his own measures. In several in- 
stances he induced farmers to join in the good-roads 
movement by offering to work highways if they would 
furnish field stone for foundation. Then he purchased a 
stone-crusher and established it on the Palisades, where 
the supply of trap-rock is inexhaustible. 

A road in which Mr. Phelps took especial interest is that 
extending from his later residence to the armory at Engle- 
wood. It is three miles long, abounds in picturesque 
effects and views, and is entered through a stately stone 
lodge. All the private roads of the estate were thrown 
open to the public for pleasure driving, use of the bridle- 
paths even being permitted to horsemen. Large numbers, 
increasing yearly, avail themselves of these privileges. 
The private character of the Grange drives is main- 
tained by several artistic gate-lodges, built at points of 
intersection with public thoroughfares. These lodges 
are artistic in design and contribute largely to the beauty 
of the surroundings. 

While utility was the prime consideration in road im- 
provement on the Grange and connecting highways, 
beauty of effect was not lost sight of, the artistic sense of 
the owner being ever present where its influence would 
contribute to the attractiveness of a scene. This is seen 
in the many bridges throughout the park, about sixty in 
number, some of them wood, but many of stone; several 
of these are quite imposing structures. 



I20 William Walter Phelps 

Next to the love for trees on his estate, Mr. Phelps 
manifested this strontj sentiment for good roads. His 
correspondence with the manager shows this persistently. 
Travelling in far-off lands, he never forgot his New Jer- 
sey home and plans for its improvement and beautifying 
were being constantly evolved. He wrote from Califor- 
nia, in the summer of 1885: "I am going to make the 
connection with the Teaneck road — our puzzle — as direct 
as possible, even if I have to cut deep." 

This determination to "cut deep," wherever Mr. 
Phelps's acute judgment saw opportunity for improving 
the material or aesthetic surroundings, culminated in a 
series of stone and turf drives unsurpassed for views, 
romantic and picturesque, and to him every mile of those 
broad and level roads and tree-lined paths was a constant 
delight. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Re-enters Congress in 1883 and again Becomes Prominent in the House — 
Presents a Bill to Establish Civil Government in Alaska — First Ap- 
propriation for a National Building in Paterson — Ilis Memorable 
Fight for the Relief of General Fitz-John Porter — Smooths out Troub- 
les with Bismarck — Important Committee Work to Establish the 
Manufacture of Ordnance and Armor Plates in this Country — Fa- 
mous Speech to Nev/ Jersey Farmers — Farming for One's Country 

IN the spring of 1883 the affairs of the district began to 
claim the attention of the Congressman-elect. Let- 
ters were numerous, asking his aid for all kinds of things 
that were wanted from the Government. The demands 
for those who had claims for pensions were many, and to 
these he gave a patient hearing and faithful support. Of 
the many private bills for relief that he introduced and 
had passed at the eight sessions of Congress where he was 
a member, by far the larger number were for the benefit 
of old soldiers, whose cause he was ever ready to plead. 
A well-known leader among the veterans of Morris 
County wrote to the editor of a local journal in 1884: 

On January 31st I wrote a letter to Hon. William Walter 
Phelps pleading that lie would use his influence, his voice, 
and his vote in behalf of the Union soldier of the late war in 
all just measures introduced in Congress for his benefit, and 
on February 4th he wrote me, from the House of Representa- 
tives, the following reply: 

" My dear Sir: 

" I have read your letter with much interest, and sympathize 
with you heartily in all efforts that arc made to provide for 

121 



122 William Walter Phelps 

those who suffered either by sea or on land in the country's 
cause. Nearly all the cases in our district have received very 
kindly treatment, and the number of orphans and widows 
whose homes are made comfortable by the monthly stipend is 
very large. 

" Yours truly, 

" \Vm. Walter Phelps." 

I trust the old comrades will make a note of this kindly let- 
ter, and the manly feeling toward them expressed in it, and in 
November next remember the author. 

The newly elected Congressman had also to encounter 
the constant demand for public documents, a vexation 
from which no Senator or Representative can free himself. 
His predecessor had left him the quota for his district of 
the government seeds, the distribution of which is always 
a great bother, and he found at this time that there were 
at least a dozen lady applicants for every package of 
flower seeds at his disposal. His reputation for politeness 
and courtesy had increased his difficulties, hundreds of 
requests coming from outside his own district. To one 
of the newspapers he had occasion to write : 

It looks as if the whole State of New Jersey wanted flower 
seeds. I have requests from all the counties in the State, and 
am at a loss what to do. Of course I have not seeds enough 
for the demand in my own district, and cannot well accede to 
demands outside it. That does not trouble me, but it troubles 
me that these outside applicants who write such pretty notes 
should think they were entirely neglected, and yet I cannot 
answer them. 

Late in 1883 Mr. Phelps went to the Adirondack's for 
a short stay and returned in time to attend the Repub- 
lican State Convention to nominate a candidate for 
governor. He strongly urged the nomination of his pre- 
decessor in Congress, Hon. John Hill, who had many 
other ardent advocates. But the convention named 



His Life and Public Services 123 

Judge Jonathan Dixon, which was not a fortunate choice, 
as the result of the election afforded abundant evidence. 

Before December, Mr. Phelps went to Washington to 
look for a dwelling. Just as he found one he thought 
suitable, he heard from a house on the next street in the 
rear the noise of a brass musical instrument, evidently 
being played by a learner. He then declined to take the 
house, as he said, laughingly, because there came to his 
mind the published quotation from the famous Spurgeon : 
"Can a man who practises for a brass band get into 
heaven? No reason why he should n't, but very difficult 
for his neighbors." 

The Congressman, however, secured a desirable house 
on Massachusetts Avenue, which made him a home of 
comfort. Here he entertained generously and hand- 
somely, and there was no more hospitable mansion in the 
city. Distinguished men, in and out of Congress, were 
welcomed there and his guests were from the world over. 
He was especially popular with the Diplomatic Corps and 
it was said that he could speak to half the members in 
their own language. 

The Forty-eighth Congress assembled December 3, 
1883, and Mr. Phelps was in attendance. It was now 
ten years since he had first appeared at the national 
Capitol to take a seat in the House of Representatives. 
Since then there had been marked changes in Congress 
and in the country. In several instances, the principles 
he had struggled to maintain in the Forty-third Congress 
had been adopted in the government policy and been put 
in practice by legislation. In finance the country had 
been educated up to his views, and his financial theories 
had been formulated into law. Specie payments had 
been resumed, the national credit upheld, and a stable 
currency established. The national debt was being con- 
stantly diminished and the rate of interest upon it de- 
creased. The movement for the abolition of the moiety 
methods in collecting the revenue of the country, which 



124 William Walter Phelps 

he had inaugurated and eagerly promoted, had been suc- 
cessful, and importers of merchandise were no longer 
blackmailed and fleeced by harpies protected by law. 
The losses and destruction of the Civil War had been 
regained and repaired. Commerce and all the industries 
of the country had responded to the improved policy of 
the Government. Business was being expanded in every 
direction and the republic was making astonishing prog- 
ress in wealth and prosperity. 

Mr, Phelps, with his years of busy intercourse with the 
moving influences of the world in his own and other 
countries, had come to a wider experience and a larger 
information and his character was more fully rounded 
out. But his lofty purposes were the same, with en- 
larged abilities to carry them into effect. 
'^ Great, also, were the individual changes in the House. 
The leaders in the Forty-third Congress were the leaders 
of neither party in the Forty-eighth. Of Mr. Phelps's 
old Congressional associates some had died, a few had 
gone up to the Senate, many had been retired to private 
life. Mr. Garfield had been made President and become 
the victim of an assassin. Mr. Blaine was a private citi- 
zen, busy preparing his famous book which recorded his 
recollections for many years of public men and events. 

Conspicuous among the Democrats of the House now 
were Randall, Carlisle, Curtis, and Hewitt; among the 
Republicans, Reed, McKinley, Dingley, Kasson, and 
Hiscock. There were others of great talent on each 
side. 

The Congressional elections in 1882 had generally been 
disastrous to the Republicans and there was a large Demo- 
cratic majority in the House. The very able John G. 
Carlisle was chosen Speaker, and Samuel J. Randall, the 
strongest intellect and the most skilful parliamentary 
manager among the Democrats, was the leader of the 
majority.^ 

The new Speaker, at the start, recognized Mr. Phelps's 



His Life and Public Services 125 

knowledge of foreign matters and made him one of the 
members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He was 
also placed on the Committees on Civil Service and on 
the Tenth Census. Early in the session he was compli- 
mented by the Speaker in being appointed one of the 
Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, of which bod> of 
scholarly men Chief Justice Waite and Senator Edmunds 
were members. 

A few days after the House was organized, Mr. Phelps 
introduced a bill providing for a civil government in the 
Territory of Alaska, to be simple in form and inexpen- 
sive. One distinctive feature of this bill was that it com- 
mitted the education of the native children to the United 
States Commissioner of Education. This interest had 
been grossly neglected. Under Russian control there 
were schools. When the United States took possession, 
these schools, which had been sustained by the Russian 
Government, were abandoned and none took their place. 
This grave omission had been noticed and deprecated 
by the leading churches and missionary societies of the 
country. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church had appointed a special committee to wait on 
Congress and solicit action. Interest in various ways 
had been manifested by the Baptist, Methodist, and Mor- 
avian Churches. A like bill was introduced in the Senate. 
The provisions of both bills were finally incorporated in 
one and passed and a civil and civilized territorial govern- 
ment was thus established in Alaska. 

At this session Mr. Phelps presented a bill for the erec- 
tion of a Federal building in Paterson. It was not an 
auspicious time for such a procedure, as Republican mem- 
bers were not favored in that overwhelmingly Democratic 
body in having granted to them appropriations for pub- 
lic buildings. Notwithstanding the discouraging circum- 
stances, Mr. Phelps used every exertion to forward his 
bill, but met strenuous and persistent opposition from 
one or two spiteful majority members of the Committee 



126 William Walter Phelps 

on Public Buildings and Grounds, who, after an appro- 
priation was agreed to, were determined that the New 
Jersey member should not get his bill up before the 
House for consideration. He persevered against all ob- 
stacles, and although failing in that House, he succeeded 
in the next Congress in obtaining the first appropria- 
tion for the handsome and commodious Federal building 
that is now an ornament to the lively, industrial city of 
Paterson. 

There was before the House what was called a bill for 
the relief of P^itz-John Porter. It may be recalled to the 
memory that General Porter, commanding the P^ifth Corps 
of the Union Army at the battle of Manassas, more fa- 
miliarly known as the second battle of Bull Run, was 
charged with disobedience of orders and neglect of duty, 
and by sentence of court-martial was dismissed in disgrace 
from the army. These proceedings were taken in a time 
of passion when the North was smarting under the reverse 
that General Pope had met with at Manassas. Some one 
had blundered and a scapegoat was in demand, and in an 
hour of despondency and gloom, the country was easily 
made to believe that Porter was a traitor. After the war 
came a reaction in favor of Porter, and in the hi^jhest 
military circles it was felt that his case did not have the 
impartial consideration that would have been given to it 
at a time when the passion of the people was not unduly 
aroused. Generals Grant, Schofield, Terry, Slocum, 
Rosecrans, and scores of other prominent Union officers, 
after a careful review of the testimony and in the light of 
revelations made subsequent to the court-martial, came 
to the conclusion that Porter was sacrificed on insufficient 
evidence and by a tribunal misled by testimony taken in 
an atmosphere of defeat, "sitting within the roar of the 
enemy's artillery." A Board of Inquiry, appointed by 
President Hayes, consisting of Generals Schofield, Terry, 
and Getty, made a careful inquiry into the facts and re- 
ported that justice required the setting aside of the find- 



His Life and Public Services 127 

ings of the court-martial and the restoration of General 
Porter to his former position in the army. On this report 
was founded the bill reported to the House by General 
Slocum. Practically the same bill was introduced in the 
Senate by General Sewell of New Jersey, an officer of the 
Union Army whose patriotism and bravery no one will 
have the hardihood to dispute. 

The bill was not acceptable to the general mass of the 
Republicans, who had no opportunity and no inclination 
to examine the evidence coolly and critically, and the 
Republican politicians and office-seekers still found in 
denunciation of P"itz-John Porter much useful political 
capital. The bill was warmly debated by the best speak- 
ers of the House day after day in January and came up 
for final action on February ist. Mr. Phelps was selected 
to make one of the closing speeches for the bill. His in- 
tuitions were invariably accurate, and in reasoning upon 
any matter, a calm and final conclusion seldom evaded 
him. In this case he made no reliance upon this faculty, 
but putting aside as many demands upon his time as pos- 
sible, for three weeks he gave every moment he could 
spare to the tiresome work of reading the voluminous 
testimony taken at the court-martial. Therefore when 
he arose to speak in concluding the debate, he stood 
there not only as an orator, but as a lawyer, giving a 
most thoughtful and keen analysis of the testimony that 
had been produced at the court-martial. Fitz-John Por- 
ter was a resident of Morristown, New Jersey, and Mr. 
Phelps, in the beginning of his argument, said : 

It is my duty to speak to-day for Fitz-John Porter because 
he is my constituent. It is at the same time a pleasure and an 
honor because he is my friend, and I believe him to be an 
honest man and a loyal soldier. 

It was twenty years last week (Monday) since the last signa- 
ture was put to the verdict of a military jury which drove him 
out of the Army and made him a leper which his Government 
should never touch with an office of trust or profit. This 



128 William Walter Phelps 

verdict awarded him such infamy that for a while Iscariot and 
Arnold were his only competitors. A blundering Department 
furnished to an anxious President, a baffled Army, and an in- 
dignant people this sacrifice ; and fifteen millions straining unto 
death to save their country in an hour of supreme despondency 
and gloom found a momentary relief in cursing the name of 
Porter. 

Who was this sacrifice ? One whose ancestry deserved well 
of the Republic; one, who as a boy of gentle heart and ways 
learned in the National Academy to hold a stain upon his 
honor as a wound, and to conceive all honor as sphered in 
loyalty to his country; one, who as a youth stood the most 
chivalrous and accomplished officer in a guild whose military 
code gives to the testimony of a member under oath no greater 
force than his formal declaration ; one who in manhood won 
wounds and glory in the field, and who on the 27th day of 
August, 1862, as said the gentleman from Michigan, "stood 
the consummate flower of the American Army and its pride." 
This was the gentle, chivalrous, illustrious soldier who was 
thus lifted up into a storm of obloquy and reproach as a traitor 
to liis country. What can he do ? His fate is worse than 
Arnold's or Judas's. Arnold, hating his country, fled from it 
and received the rewards of treason; but Porter loves his 
country, and has no thought except of loyal service. Judas 
went out and died conscience stricken ; but Porter's conscience 
is clear, and remorse refuses to lead him to the field of blood. 
He does what an honest man ought, and only an honest man 
can do; he takes up his burden and bears it. He will live, and 
live down his wrongs. He will wait, and trust to God and his 
country for redress. He withdrew to the quiet of a New Jersey 
village and established his home. There he faithfully dis- 
charged all his duties, neither seeking nor shunning observa- 
tion. He was a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor, 
citizen, and friend. That little village for twenty years has 
watched, honored, and loved the man. They have seen his 
eye grow sad and his hair grow white with hope deferred. But 
he never talked of his grievance nor asked for })ity. He was 
fulfilling a sentence which, for such a man, Edward Everett 
truly said, was " in some respects worse than a sentence of 



His Life and Public Services 129 

death." This was his home life. His life abroad was a con- 
slant struggle to regain his good name. That was his mission, 
and he prosecuted it without pause or rest. On every proper 
occasion, in every proper place he declared his innocence, 
offered his evidence, and asked for examination. 

The testimony of Generals Grant and Sherman bearing 
on the case, and the written opinions of some of the most 
eminent lawyers of the day, were quoted by the speaker. 
He pictured the valiant deeds of Porter on many battle- 
fields, and then concluded his remarks in these words : 

Mr. Chairman, the chief of the rebellion walked down the 
steps of this Capitol threatening to return and destroy it. He 
attempted its destruction and failed. Yet Jefferson Davis 
walks in freedom. Men who penned our soldiers in Ander- 
sonville and Libby still live. 

Officers trained at West Point, whose treason is not investi- 
gated, for they practised it from the Mississippi to the Potomac, 
sit in this House. Shall Porter, innocent in heart if erring in 
act, alone be punished ? Must he be a sacrifice for a nation ? 

The hero of Mexico and Malvern and Manassas asks only 
for justice; if you refuse him justice, I plead, against his 
wishes, for mercy. Take this innocent man from the side of 
Judas and Arnold and place him by the side of those who 
honor him — by the side of Getty and Sykes and Terry and 
Schofield and Grant. 

The most rabid of the Republican journals condemned 
Mr. Phelps in no sparing language for the stand he took 
in defence of the disgraced soldier. Other newspapers of 
the same party, but of cooler judgment, expressed their 
regrets at his course mildly, but the unprejudiced press, 
as a whole, commended his plea for Porter and all acknow- 
ledged its marked ability. It met with the approbation 
of the New York journals, and the Tribune correspondent 
said : 

Mr. Phelps had not been speaking many minutes when men 
9 



I30 William Walter Phelps 

began to walk over from the Democratic side, and during the 
last half hour of his speech he was the centre of a large group 
of Representatives who were anxious to lose none of his telling 
sentences in behalf of Porter. The speech was a model of 
terse and vigorous eloquence, clear, logical, and polished. 
Toward the close Mr. Phelps's delivery became more animated 
and he made his points with an energy that awakened en- 
thusiasm from the jury he was addressing. He was repeatedly 
and heartily applauded, and when he sat down everybody who 
had listened to the entire debate was ready to declare that this 
was the best speech ever made in behalf of Porter. His frank- 
ness and willingness to admit points which seemed to tell 
against Porter disarmed his opponents and made them almost 
willing to accept the explanations offered in his behalf. 

The scene in the House was a very exciting one and 
the newspaper correspondents at Washington may be left 
to describe it. 

The Boston Advertiser : 

Fitz-John Porter sat in the gallery for more than eight hours 
this afternoon and evening. At the close he received the con- 
gratulations of scores of friends that, after all these years, the 
House of Representatives, by more than one hundred majority, 
had done all in its power to make reparation for the injustice 
toward him for years. It was a proud moment for him. His 
eyes glistened with old-time lustre as he looked over tlio bal- 
cony and heard the verdict given. All day long the parlia- 
mentary battle had raged. The spectators could almost see 
the clash of arms and hear the thunder of artillery, as they 
were depicted by the hot debaters. Marengo, Balaklava, 
Bannockburn, and all the great battles of history were ap- 
pealed to for illustrations. The handling of troops, the head- 
long charge, the duel of artillery, the surges of victory and 
defeat could almost be felt as the veterans of the war fought 
their battles over again, charging again and again to restore or 
to further disgrace Porter. On the Republican side the party 
whi]i was cracked to keep this one man down. Grant was 
belittled, Schofield accused, Porter hissed at, in the hope of 



His Life and Public Services 131 

making a little party capital at the expense of this one old man. 
Federal soldiers pleaded Porter's cause, and Republicans voted 
for his restoration. Among Porter's friends were nineteen 
who had fought in the Union army, — three generals, seven 
colonels, three captains, and six privates. Of the New Eng- 
land members, thirteen were for Porter and but nine against 
him. Calkins made his speech, significant only for his notice 
that the Republicans might call out deneral Sherman as their 
presidential candidate, and then William Walter Phelps made 
the speech of the whole debate. Beginning with studied cool- 
ness, it was soon apparent that he had mastered the subject; 
while members recalled his reputation as an orator, the listless- 
ness disappeared around him. As he stood in the front row, 
the seats filled and members came in from the cloak-rooms, 
while Keifer and Calkins went out. The Democrats came 
over from their side and made an admiring circle in the area. 
At his front Slocum, Cox, Mills, and others stood listening to 
his plea. Mr. Morse's two little boys, playing about their 
father, stopped and watched Phelps with open-eyed admira- 
tion. His voice could be heard in every corner as he told of 
Porter's heroic career, and showed how, at Gainesville, he had 
done his duty; aye, more than that, for his discretion had 
prevented what might have been a catastrophe. With galling 
emphasis he read from the Comte de Paris's revised history, 
praising Porter; the author whom Calkins had praised as fair 
when he read from the old editions, written before the Comte 
had seen the new evidence. He offered opinions from 
O'Conor, Reverdy Johnson, Sidney Bartlett, and other great 
lawyers, regarding the court-martial verdict. Then, in con- 
clusion, he pleaded for Porter because his vindication is but 
just, and then because it is but mercy to a man who has suf- 
fered enough. " Give him back," he said, " to his old Fifth 
Army Corps, who have loved him and will so long as one man 
remains. Take him in from the Iscariots and the Arnolds, 
and place him with our Getty, our Terry, our Schofield, and 
our Grant." And, while the house and galleries trembled 
with api)lause, Phelps looked up once at Porter and sat down, 
while a crowd of both parties shook his hand and rejoiced at 
the best speech for Porter ever heard in Congress. 



132 William Walter Phelps 

The Detroit Free Press : 

The debate in the House to-day was the most interesting of 
the session. The members were present in unusual numbers 
and many Senators were upon the floor. The galleries were 
occupied to the last seat and many people stood up. Perhaps 
the engrossing nature of the proceedings will be best shown by 
the fact that hundreds of the audience remained from the com- 
mencement to the close, seven and a half hours, in their seats. 
In point of logical arrangement, elegance of diction, strong 
presentation of facts, many of them new, and scholarly de- 
livery the speech of Wm. Walter Phelps, of New Jersey, was 
the best of the whole series of speeches upon the bill. 

The Boston Journal : 

It was by far the most effective one on that side, and the 
most eloquent of the session. The latter part of Phelps's 
speech was animated and eloquent, and drew not only hearty 
applause from the galleries, but brought around him nearly 
every member present. They stood before him in crowds and 
listened to every word. If a vote could have been taken at 
the close of his speech probably many who had made up their 
minds otherwise would have cast a vote for Porter. 

The Boston Herald: 

His speech was an admirable argument, clearly and elo- 
quently e.xpressed. He delivered it very gracefully. Interest 
in it in the crowded galleries and on the well-filled floor 
increased as he proceeded. Members left their seats and 
crowded around Mr. Phelps, and he grew more and more 
eloquent, until at the close they thronged about him and shook 
his hand until it was tired. Old members of the House said 
to-night that Mr. Phelps made to-day one of the best speeches 
in the House since the war. 

The Cleveland Leader : 

William Walter Phelps established himself as one of the great 
speakers of this Congress by his defence of Fitz-John Porter. 



His Life and Public Services 133 

A New Haven journal: 

The best speech during the debate was that of Mr. William 
Walter Phelps of New Jersey, and in some sort of Connecticut, 
as he has a fine old homestead at Simsbury. He fairly tore to 
pieces the misrepresentations of Cutcheon and others, oppo- 
nents of the bill, and while never departing from parliamentary 
courtesy, he convicted them of either the grossest and most 
culpable ignorance or deliberate falsehood. 

A prominent Philadelphia paper said : 

That speech was one of the most brilliant that Congress has 
heard for many a day. Broad, grand and elastic with human 
emotion, it touched every chord of a manly heart. Based on 
simple justice, solidified with common sense, and scintillating 
flashes of surprising beauty, that speech will take its place in 
history as one of the ablest and most original in its happy con- 
struction that ever was delivered in our national Congress. 
New Jersey has a right to feel proud of William Walter Phelps. 

The Albany A rgus : 

William Walter Phelps showed himself to be a very able 
speaker, a thorough scholar, and a charming wit, by his speech 
in Congress years ago on the Franking Privilege. The speech 
on Fitz-John Porter was very able, manly, and true. 

A Washington newspaper said editorially : 

William Walter Phelps's speeches in the present Congress 
have attracted more attention than any of the session in either 
House. His defence of his neighbor, Fitz-John Porter, was 
made with delicacy and warmth, and exercised a civilizing 
influence over party divisions, setting the way for patriotic 
differences across party lines. 

Many pages could be filled with extracts from impartial 
newspapers approving the independent and courageous 
action of Mr. Phelps in this affair, and praising the 



134 William Walter Phelps 

eloquence and skilfulness of his defence of the unfortunate 
general, 

A joint resolution was introduced by Mr. Phelps au- 
thorizing the Secretary of War to assist in cancelling the 
debt and enlarging and improving the grounds and col- 
lections of Washington's Headquarters at Morristown. 
N. J., and in securing suitable ground on which to gather 
the remains of Revolutionary' soldiers there buried, and 
in erecting monuments over the same. 

There came up in this House for settlement a very 
vexatious matter, made important only by circumstances. 
In the early part of the winter, Dr. Eduard Lasker. a 
distinguished member of the Liberal party in the German 
Parliament, died while on a visit to this countr>\ Where- 
upon one of his admirers in the House offered some reso- 
lutions of sympathy with the body of which Lasker was 
a member, and in the resolutions were a few words of 
commendation of Lasker's political principles. At a 
glance, the resolutions seemed to be harmless. Little 
attention was paid to them and they were passed. It 
seems that the resolutions had to be transmitted to the 
American Minister at Berlin and by him presented to the 
German Foreign Office, and through that channel sent to 
the Parliament. Lasker was probably nearly or quite a 
Socialist, and the German Chancellor Bismarck declined 
to deliver the resolutions because it was held that Lasker's 
political principles were dangerous to the Government and 
injurious to the German people. In sending the resolu- 
tions back, the Chancellor said that he would have erate- 
fully received and transmitted them had they concerned 
only the personal qualities of the departed statesman, but 
that he was reluctantly obliged to return them because 
they contained an estimate of Lasker's political views, 
which the Chancellor believed to be incorrect, and haviner 
that belief, he felt that he had no authority to transmit 
them to his Parliament. Matters were additionally com- 
plicated because the members of the Liberal Union of 



His Life and Public Services 135 

the German Parliament had passed and sent to the House 
a memorial containing an avowal of their appreciation 
and hearty thanks for its action upon the death of their 
deceased associate, and also expressing their cordial good 
wishes to our people. Here was a dilemma. The hot- 
headed members of the House wished to stand by its first 
action, but those of more sober judgment felt that the 
House had carelessly, but unintentionally, done some- 
thing that could be construed as offensive to a friendly 
Power. At this juncture, the ex-Minister to Austria, 
with his knowledge of diplomacy and his familiarity with 
the methods and etiquette prevailing in foreign official 
departments, was prominent in unravelling this tangle. 
In the Foreign Affairs Committee he suggested a resolu- 
tion which was reported to, and adopted by the House, 
to the effect that the original resolutions were intended 
only as a tribute of respect to the memory of an eminent 
foreign statesman who had died within the border of the 
United States, and an expression of sympathy with the 
German people, of whom he had been an honored repre- 
sentative; and further, that the House having no official 
concern with the relations between the executive and the 
legislative branches of the German Government, did not 
deem it requisite to its dignity to criticise the manner of 
the reception of the resolutions, or the circumstances 
which prevented their reaching their destination. This 
was accompanied by another resolution, intended to make 
all smooth with the German Laskerites by saying, "That 
the House cordially reciprocates the wishes of the Liberal 
Union of the members of the German Parliament for a 
closer union of the two nations, and recognizes their 
graceful appreciation of its sympathy with those who 
mourn the death of Eduard Lasker. " 

A very felicitous and adroit speech was made by Mr. 
Phelps in advocacy of these resolutions. He argued 
that they contained no word of apology and no word of 
insult to the German Empire, and that the receipt of the 



136 William Walter Phelps 

memorial of the Liberal Union was acknowledged with a 
reciprocation of all the cordial wishes which it contained. 
This he said was a pathway in which we could walk out 
of the slough pleasantly, and make the atmosphere warmer 
and all things rosier between the two nations. This 
speech seemed to melt away the opposition; the resolu- 
tions were adopted, and this queer parliamentary incident 
ended.' 

Late in the session a resolution was adopted creating a 
select committee, with extensive powers to sit during the 
recess of Congress, and in any place, to inquire into and 
investigate the matter of ordnance ; the capacity of steel 
works in the United States to produce metal of suitable 
quality and sufficient quantity of high power, and for 
metal plates and armor for war vessels; to inquire into 
all matters concerning the capacity of our navy yards for 
manufacturing armament for war vessels and seacoast 
defences, and to report the best localities in the United 
States for building large guns, engines, and iron and steel 
ships of war. This Committee as appointed was com- 
posed of some of the most competent men in the House, 
including Samuel J. Randall, Abram S. Hewitt, Frank 
Hiscock, William Walter Phelps. Thomas B. Reed, and 
Charles F. Crisp. The Committee was continued through 
the succeeding Congress and in these continuous years 
performed a great deal of very important and valuable 
work. Much time was given to the testing of cannon 
and armor plates by experts. American manufacturers 
were encouraged to compete with the Krupp works, and 
as a result of the labors and investigations of the Com- 
mittee, Congress passed various bills for the manufacture 
in this country of ordnance, armor plates, and armored 
vessels, thus giving an impetus to the reconstruction of 
the American Navy, which has since become so formidable 
in its great armored ships. 

When midsummer was reached. Senators and Repre- 
sentatives became anxious to get home to look after their 



His Life and Public Services 137 

own re-elections and to take part in the presidential con- 
test of that year, which had already begun, and a final 
adjournment took place July 7th. 

Notwithstanding he was busy with his public duties, 
Mr. Phelps, at the request of the New Jersey State Board 
of Agriculture, took the time to make an address at the 
annual meeting of that body in February, 1884. This 
annual meeting always brought together a large number 
of the most intelligent and progressive agriculturists of 
the State. The theme of the speaker was: "New Jersey, 
Her Farmers and Her Farms." In his opening remarks, 
Mr. Phelps said that he did not claim any superior know- 
ledge of agriculture derived from its practice, yet he could 
not entirely exclude himself from the guild of farmers. 
He could not recall the time when he did not own a piece 
of land, which he tilled always with pride, though not 
always with profit. His conviction was that every citizen 
of a republic who deserved well of it should, even at a 
sacrifice, supplement his other activities, however pressing 
and numerous, with a little agriculture. He believed if 
it were a sweet and honorable thing to die for one's 
country, so it was to farm for it, and he had acted ac- 
cordingly. The reason of the ancients, when they made 
this practice one of the tests of republican character, yet 
exists. Agriculture is still the basis of national pros- 
perity, and duty calls upon the patriotic citizen who suc- 
ceeds in the forum, the market, or on the field, to use 
some of the resources he has won there in fostering agri- 
culture. 

Mr. Phelps used much information and many statistics 
bearing upon his subject, derived from the Agricultural 
and other public departments at Washington, and some 
of the t®pics upon which he discoursed were: Roads, 
fences, trees, farmers' profits, home and foreign markets, 
Western advantages and disadvantages, and a comparison 
of New Jersey's crops with those of other States. He 
pointed out the special advantages of New Jersey for 



138 William Walter Phelps 

farming, showing that there was no necessity for her sons 
to "go West " to become prosperous farmers. 

This address was published in pamphlet form for general 
circulation and it was uniformly referred to in flattering 
terms by the newspapers, excepting the ultra free-trade 
journals, which excepted to his declarations that protec- 
tion to American industries builds up cities, increases the 
profits of farming and the value of land. A leading New 
England agricultural journal said: "The agricultural ad- 
dress of the Hon. William Walter Phelps has attracted 
more attention than any other address of its kind." 
Among the criticisms from other newspapers were these: 

The Newark Advertiser : 

No other agricultural address attracted so much attention 
and brought out so much comment. The speaker narrated 
many interesting facts, showing by the census the farmers of 
our State to be worth more than those of any other. 

The Morristown jferseynian : 

Through a mistake, we did not receive a sufficient number 
of copies of Mr. Phelps's great agricultural speech to supply 
our subscribers; but as more have been ordered we expect 
to accommodate all. There appears to be one opinion with 
reference to this speech — that it surpasses any effort of its 
class ever presented to the public. Wherever it is discussed, 
in public print or private conversation, it is the subject of 
praise. 

The Newark Journal : 

The speech of Hon. \\m. Walter Phelps delivered early in 
the last month before the State Board of Agriculture at Tren- 
ton, is full of interesting and instructive matter. It calls so 
strongly for permanent and continuous attention, that nothing 
has been lost by our taking such time as we have, to carefully 
peruse and consider it. It does not belong to the sensational 
and ephemeral literature of the day. It is a comprehensive, 
and powerful i)resentation not only of questions strictly agri- 



His Life and Public Services 139 

cultural, but of others only broadly and perhaps remotely so, 
as those of general public policy; in fact it is the work of an 
able patriotic statesman. All may not agree to Mr. Phelps's 
position, but all will, we think, concede his sincerity and that 
his positions are most ably sustained. 

The New York Tribune : 

A most forcible plea for the diversification of American in- 
dustries was recently made by the Hon. William Walter Phelps 
at Trenton. He discussed the relations of agriculture to other 
industries and proved by official statistics that the prosperity 
of the farmers, not only of New Jersey but of the United 
States, was attributable in large measure to Protection. This 
masterly address, the full text of which appeared in the 
Tribune, was the most powerful argument which has been ad- 
dressed to American agricultural classes since Mr. Greeley's 
fingers were stiffened in death. 

Mr. Phelps's conclusions are fully confirmed by the Feb- 
ruary report of Mr. J. R. Dodge, Statistician of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 

The Jersey City Journal : 

Mr. Phelps takes clear and strong positions and presents 
strong grounds in their support. He seems determined to 
prove what he says to the satisfaction of his hearers; and his 
opponents will admit he comes as near to that as anybody. 
He disclaims all oratorical display, and certainly nothing is 
indulged in of the " High Falutin " or " Spread Eagle " order: 
but as a statesmanlike view of all the policies of the country 
in connection with agriculture, we must look for its equal to 
the days of Henry Clay. 

The Trenton Times : 

Congressman Phelps showed the agriculturists of the State 
last evening that he was thoroughly posted respecting farm 
economy and the means by which farm land can by made 
exceedingly profitable. Mr. Phelps's discourse was timely, 
thoughtful, and decidedly entertaining. 



I40 William Walter Phelps 

The Newark AVwj / 

For his really interesting and carefully prepared address on 
agriculture the farmers of this State should be grateful to Con- 
gressman William Walter Phelps. He has given them what 
must be most gratifying information concerning their own 
wealth and the agricultural resources of the State. 

From a New York newspaper : 

Representative Phelps, of New Jersey, delivered an address 
on farming yesterday which will surprise even his warmest 
friends by its ability and mode of treating topics usually con- 
sidered commonplace and threadbare. Indeed, when one 
remembers how many addresses have been made on similar 
occasions and on the same topic, it is remarkable to meet with 
a speech so new and interesting as well as strong as the one 
fully reported to-day. The statistics which Mr. Phelps pre- 
sents are full of interest, and will attract the attention of 
farmers in every part of the country. 

The Philadelphia Press : 

The recent speech of William Walter Phelps before the 
Agricultural Society of New Jersey has attracted wide atten- 
tion. It was an exceedingly clear and cogent exposition of 
the great value of Protection to the farmers. The Republi- 
cans might do much worse than nominate Mr. Phelps for Vice- 
President. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Eno Embezzlement — Mr. Phelps's Successful Efforts to Save the 
Second National Bank of New York from Ruin — A Financial Panic 
Averted by his Skill and Energy 

IN 1884 Mr. Phelps figured grandly in an affair wherein 
his business activity and generosity relieved the dis- 
tress of many people and saved the community from a 
financial panic. 

On Monday, May 12th, while he was in the House, a 
messenger handed him a telegram which read: "Come 
immediately to New York," and was signed by Amos R. 
Eno. Mr. Eno was his father's old business partner 
and relative, a solid man of many millions, who had 
never sent him a dispatch before and had scarcely written 
him a letter. He knew that such a message from Mr. 
Eno meant trouble of the most serious kind. In a mo- 
ment he suspected that it meant disaster to the Second 
National Bank of New York City, of which Mr. Eno's 
son was president. So, greatly distressed and perplexed, 
Mr. Phelps left immediately for New York. Arriving in 
that city late in the evening, he went at once to Mr. Eno's 
residence, where his coming was expected and the family 
were all up. In a few minutes he heard the startling in- 
telligence. On Sunday, the day previous, John C. Eno, 
the young president, when he found that his defalcations 
could no longer be concealed, confessed his crimes to his 
father. He had defaulted to an amount without prece- 
dent and that challenged belief. He had squandered the 
money of his brothers and sisters, which was in his charge, 

141 



142 William Walter Phelps 

had made away with more than a million and a half of 
his father's personal securities left for safety in the bank 
safe, and had embezzled three millions of the bank's ready 
cash, and not one dollar of any kind of securities was left 
to represent the loss. 

The father was at first astounded at the son's confes- 
sion, then mortified, then enraged, only finally to become 
heart-broken over the ruin of his boy, and the blemish 
on his family name. He did not know what to do for 
twenty-four hours, and turned for support to one much 
younger than himself, and looked to the son in time of dif- 
ficulty as he had often looked to the father years before. 
This was the situation as William Walter Phelps found it 
when he heard the revelations of his father's old partner. 

What was to be done? There was a loss of over three 
millions to be made up to a bank whose capital was only 
$300,cxx). The deposits were four and a half millions, 
and these had to be paid, or else three thousand de- 
positors, of whom perhaps two thousand were women — 
many of those widows and orphans — must be made to 
suffer. This suffering would not be confined to de- 
positors, but the fall of a bank which enjoyed as high 
credit as any other financial institution in the land would 
precipitate a panic which might inaugurate a general na- 
tional suffering and prostration of business. Mr. Phelps 
then thought of nothing except to save the country from 
this loss. For some years after his father's death he had 
been a director, but with the understanding that nothing 
was to be expected of him in the way of superintend- 
ence or care. But for some time he had not been a 
director. When Mr. Eno put his inexperienced son in as 
president, the understanding was that the father would 
take entire charge and responsibility, and this guarantee 
from a man of such unvarying honesty and worth so many 
millions seemed to be satisfactory. But Mr. Phelps's 
thought of any moral responsibility on his part was soon 
lost in his earnest desire to save a panic. 



His Life and Public Services 143 

He spent many hours in persuading Mr. Eno, an old 
man of seventy-three years, that it was better for him in- 
stantly to pay the whole than to be, through his son, the 
occasion of such suffering. Hours went by and he pleaded 
warmly, and all the children sincerely joined with Mr. 
Phelps in his efforts to induce the father to make the 
sacrifice. All his kin. without any hesitation, told him 
that they preferred absolute poverty rather than to in- 
herit money which had been saved at the cost of the name 
of the family. The next morning the father yielded so 
far as to agree to pay two millions if the stockholders 
would pay one. It seemed hopeless to get one million 
of dollars from them, because their extremest legal lia- 
bility was $300,000. But it seemed worth while to try 
and the forenoon was spent by Mr. Eno and Mr. Phelps 
in efforts to save the bank. The latter in the afternoon 
drove to the residences of the leading stockholders to ask 
for their co-operation. He was met everywhere with 
the natural reply: "It is Eno's fault. His son was put 
in at his request. We understood him to guarantee any 
loss from his son. We will pay our legal part and no 
more." Mr. Phelps in each case offered to pay one fifth 
of the sum, but it was in vain, and he returned discour- 
aged, to struggle with the heart-broken father. He in- 
duced Mr. Eno to raise the amount he was willing to 
contribute and then arranged for a meeting of the leading 
directors and stockholders that evening at the house of 
Mr. Isaac N. Phelps, a quiet residence not likely to at- 
tract the attention of reporters, who had, however, heard 
of the place of meeting, and when the gathering was 
ready to proceed to business at eight o'clock, there were 
seven reporters from the prominent journals of the city 
waiting on the steps and in the vestibule of the house. 

The discussion was long and full of difficulties, and 
there were constant alternations of hope and despair. 
Some would do nothing, others a little, and Mr. Eno, 
who was present with his counsel, stolidly refused to do 



144 William Walter Phelps 

more. Mr. Phelps offered to put in $200,000 if the rest 
could be raised. The offer was not accepted. After 
midnight, when the meeting was about to adjourn with- 
out a decision, Mr. Phelps and the counsel for Mr. Eno 
took the latter into another room, and after this con- 
sultation and at the last moment, he consented to give 
$2,600,000 if the rest were raised. Then, in private in- 
terviews, stockholders and directors who were unwilling 
were induced to make certain promises which Mr. Eno 
required ; that was, that each stockholder present should 
pay in cash three times the amount of his stock, and then 
Mr. Eno would pay the remaining deficiency. 

The reporters were informed that the deficiency had 
been provided for, and the meeting broke up. Day was 
breaking, but Mr. Phelps could not go to rest, for ar- 
rangements had to be made for the rush which would the 
next morning crowd the corridors of the Second National 
Bank. Presidents of trust companies and bank directors 
sleeping in freestone mansions around Murray Hill were 
awakened and told the facts. It was the time of a finan- 
cial depression, when the banks were doing their utmost 
to be ready for a threatened panic. Not a bank or a 
trust company refused aid to the extent of their ability 
when Mr. Phelps asked them, as his coupe rattled in the 
sunrise hours from house to house. Mr. Eno had no 
security to give for money, as his securities had all been 
taken. He would give liis notes and would meet them 
b\- mortgaging property, a part of which was the great 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, as soon as it could be done. Mr. 
Phelps would give his own name as security. 

Before nine o'clock Mr. Phclj)s, with Mr. Amos R. Eno 
on his arm, started for the bank. A crowd had already 
gathered and they could enter the building only through 
the aid of policemen. The bank was opened at half-past 
nine, although ten was the legal hour, and the payments 
began. The first money received in aid of the bank was 
$90,000 in greenbacks, which came up early from Mr. 



His Life and Public Services 145 

Phelps's office. This was his contribution toward making 
up the deficit. He subscribed it first as an example to 
other stockholders to come forward. Everything at the 
bank was going along well until a little after ten o'clock, 
when consternation came to all the directors in the bank 
and to Mr. Eno, when a draft for $95,000, which had 
been accepted by the Clearing House and cashed, was 
brought in. It had been drawn by the president the 
afternoon before, and after his confession of guilt to his 
father. But it was an additional loss to be provided for. 
In his despair, Mr. Eno broke down and no entreaties 
could move him. Yet they must raise the extra amount 
or the bank must close. The National Bank examiner 
stood pale with the rest. No one present felt able to 
assume the additional burden. The examiner said: "I 
must close the doors then. ' ' But after a moment's pause, 
the examiner approached Mr. Phelps, who had just con- 
tributed $90,000, and saying, "It is cruel to ask it after 
you have done so much, but the fate of so many depends 
upon it, can you not make another effort to save the bank 
and avert the consequences of its closing?" Mr. Phelps 
then said to Mr. Eno: "I will share this with you." 
After consulting with his counsel, Mr. Eno consented 
and the examiner congratulated Mr. Phelps, saying that 
the last rapids had been passed and everything was saved. 
Mr. Phelps consequently became responsible for $47,500 
more, and Mr. Eno's note for an equal sum was accepted 
by the Clearing House. 

Money that had been promised came pouring into the 
bank all the forenoon, and its doors were kept open until 
six in the evening. The next day the run on the bank 
ceased and its customers were making deposits. 

Mr. Eno subsequently reimbursed all the stockholders 
for the amounts they paid consequent upon his son's mis- 
conduct, and some years after sent Mr. Phelps a check, 
with interest added, for the $47,500 he had paid as a last 
act in rescuing the bank from insolvency, but Mr. Phelps 



146 William Walter Phelps 

was not repaid the $90,000 he voluntarily and without 
solicitation contributed at the very start of the efforts to 
save the bank. Mr. Phelps tried to keep the part he 
took in the transaction as quiet as possible and from the 
newspapers, but his beneficial action was understood 
in banking and business circles and he received from 
financiers all over the country letters of appreciation and 
thanks. 

A letter published in the papers from John A. Stewart, 
President of the United States Trust Company, said : 
"If Walter Phelps lives to be a hundred years old, he will 
never again have the opportunity of doing so big a service 
to this community, and indeed, to the country, as he did 
last Tuesday." 



CHAPTER XV 

The Blaine Presidential Campaign — Phelps's Brilliant Work for His Friend 
— Caricatured and Maligned — The Sealed Letter — Hard at Work in 
Congress — Recuperating in California 

^ IT was well known in the spring of 1884 that the name of 
1 James G. Blaine would be brought before the Repub- 
lican National Convention of that year for the presidential 
nomination. The sentiment of the party in New Jersey 
was not unanimous. Senator Edmunds of Vermont had 
supporters. Mr. Frelinghuysen, President Arthur's Sec- 
retary of State, with United States Senator Sewell, and 
nearly all the Federal office-holders, advocated the nomi- 
nation of Mr. Arthur, but the preference of the rank and 
file of the party was plainly for Blaine. Mr, Phelps at- 
tended the New Jersey State convention, and although 
the delegation there chosen for the national convention 
was divided in their preferences for President, the Blaine 
men predominated, and Mr. Phelps was one of the dele- 
gates. 

Mr. Blaine himself did not want to be a candidate in 
the contest this year. He did not wish to keep out of 
public life, but he had a feeling that the oflfice of Secre- 
tary of State was one of nearly equal dignity, though of 
less conspicuity, than the Presidency, and he believed that 
to him would easily fall the first position in the Cabinet 
of a Republican President. But this was not all. With 
his almost supernatural insight into coming public events, 
and his thorough knowledge of political uncertainties, 
there became impressed upon him various forebodings of 

147 



14^^ W^illiam Walter Phelps 

defeat. His confidential friends were not unaware of his 
feelin<^. In the winter of 1884 ^^^ wrote a letter to Mr. 
Phelps, asking the latter to use his discretion in making 
it public at a proper time, in which he asked that his 
name should not be brought into the convention as a 
candidate. Mr. Phelps was one of those who held firmly 
to the opinion that a man of Mr. Blaine's mental gifts 
and executive capacity ought to be President, and not 
sharing his friend's forebodings of defeat, he consulted 
with other Blaine leaders, when it was found that the 
movement for the nomination of the Maine statesman 
had gone too far to be counteracted and. his letter was 
not made public. Mr. Blaine was easily put in nomina- 
tion. 

Weeks before the assembling of the convention, when 
the nomination was foreshadowed as practically certain, 
he was assailed by the opposition press and politicians in 
the most malignant manner possible. Not only his private 
character, but his public integrity was impeached. Old, 
exploded, and forgotten slanders were revived, but the 
main charge against him was that he had acquired stock 
in a Southwestern railroad as a price of certain rulings he 
made while in the Speaker's chair, when legislation affect- 
ing this corporation was pendmg in the House. When 
these accusations were fresh and were aimed at Mr. 
Blaine in 1876, they were brought before the House and 
disposed of completely. Wiiat was more than anything 
else reprehensible in their reviv^al at this time was that 
they were set on foot and encouraged by jealous rivals 
who were at the head of factions in the Republican party 
inimical to Mr. Blaine. 

Mr. Phelps did not hesitate to appear at once as the 
champion of his esteemed friend, and as he IkkI long 
known all about these charges of years before, he was 
able to initiate a sound defence of the great Republican 
leader. His first statement was made public through a 
letter to the New York lizu-niiig Post, which had greatly 



His Life and Public Services 149 

fostered the warfare upon Mr. Blaine. Of this letter the 
New York Tribune said editorially: 

The letter of the Hon. William Walter Phelps given to-day, 
treats with courteous severity the stale slanders of the Evening 
Post against Mr. Blaine. No other man in tlie country could 
have spoken with greater weight on this matter. His own high 
character, the keen sense of honor which has more than once 
compelled him to sacrifice personal interests to a sense of duty, 
and his close personal knowledge of Mr. Blaine's business 
affairs for many years, more than justify him in saying: "I 
think I may claim some qualifications for the task. I have 
long had a close personal intimacy with Mr. Blaine, and during 
many years have had that knowledge and care of his moneyed 
interests which men concerned in public affairs are not inapt 
to devolve upon friends who have had financial training and 
experience. I do not see how one man could know another 
better than I know Mr. Blaine, and he has to-day my full con- 
fidence and warm regard. I am myself somewhat known in 
the city of New York, and think I have some personal rank 
with you and your readers. Am I claiming too much in claim- 
ing that there is not one among you who would regard me as 
capable of an attempt to mislead the public in any way? With 
this personal allusion — pardonable, if not demanded under the 
circumstances — I proceed to consider your charges." 

Mr, Phelps arrayed his facts with crushing force and 
showed that Mr, Blaine had not the slightest interest, 
present or prospective, in the railroad in question at the 
time of the action in Congress, He proved that Mr. 
Blaine acquired his interest as an investment years after- 
ward, precisely on the same terms as others, among whom 
were some of his then accusers. This defence of the Re- 
publican presidential nominee was quoted and criticised 
by nearly every newspaper in the country, Mr. Blaine's 
supporters maintained that it was a complete vindication 
of their chief, and his enemies denounced it, asserting 
that it was a lame and mistaken defence. The warfare 



I=iO 



William Walter Phelps 



of slander and vituperation against the Republican presi 
dential candidate was carried on industriously and relent- 
lessly until the close of the polls on Election day. During 
much of the campaign the enemy's guns were trained 
upon ]\Ir. Phelps, as well as the friend whose cause he 
was upholding, and he was a great deal of the time under 
a shower of abuse and defamation. If the New Jersey 
Congressman had never before enjoyed a national reputa- 
tion, he certainly acquired it now through the widespread 
attention he received vicariously from the opposition 
press and platform speakers. 

After the election, one of the leading newspapers of 
the day said : 

Hon. William Walter Phelps of New Jersey was the best 
caricatured member of Congress in the last campaign. Piuk 
literally kept his picture, or rather, a farcial representation, 
continually in its pages. Consequently his uncertain Con- 
gressional district gave him the most flattering majority ever 
given to any Congressman in Northern New Jersey. 

Early in the campaign Mr. Phelps went to Bar Harbor 
for a consultation with Mr. Blaine; then he came home 
and took the stump. His regard for Mr. Blaine had 
aroused him to a brilliant activity. The Republican 
candidate's superb mentality, his services to his party 
and his country, his earnest championship of a protective 
tariff, his long and useful experience in public affairs, and 
his grand and intense Americanism, were some of the 
subjects that inspired Mr. Phelps's glowing and impres- 
sive oratory. He spoke in all the counties and in all the 
towns of any considerable size in New Jersey. In all the 
chief cities he addressed immense audiences and was re- 
ceived by the people everywhere he went with ovations 
and demonstrations of welcome. He spoke almost daily 
from the middle of September until the election and with 
telling effect. It was assumed that he was to some ex- 



His Life and Public Services 151 

tent a personal representative of the Republican presi- 
dential standard-bearer. 

Conditions seemed to the Republicans to promise cer- 
tain success, but the contest was an unusually heated one. 
On the eve of the election there came rolling from the 
toneue of a fanatical and officious cleric the three famous 
and fatal "R's" — Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion — when 
too late to counteract their baneful effect. 

On the night of the election, Mr. Phelps went to the 
office of the Tribune in New York to hear the returns. 
He was accompanied by his young daughter, who had 
the closest and warmest sympathy with her father in 
all his political undertakings, aspirations, and ambitions. 
As the news came into the editorial rooms that evening, 
where there was a gathering of noted Republicans, dis- 
appointment and gloom began to gather on the faces of 
those present. The returns received up to midnight 
were not positively decisive, but discouraging, and Mr. 
Phelps and his daughter remained in the city all night. 
The later returns the next morning were just a little more 
hopeful, but not conclusive. Then followed several days 
of doubt and conflicting reports. It was, however, de- 
veloped that New York State held the balance of power, 
and it also became known that Mr. Blaine had the State 
by a handful of votes. General Butler had been running 
for President on a Greenback-Labor ticket. In the slim 
plurality for Blaine was the opportunity of the skilful and 
practised manipulators in New York of election returns. 
A few hundred votes transferred from Butler to Cleveland 
and the work was done, and there vanished all reasonable 
hope of James G. Blaine ever reaching the Presidency of 
the United States. There was never a more pointed in- 
stance of the great mischief that is sometimes wrought by 
small incidents, nor a better illustration of the axiom that 
there is nothing certain in politics that has not been made 
history. 

The whole chapter of Mr. Blaine and the Presidency 



152 William Walter Phelps 

may be closed in the following words from an eminent 
writer: 

Nothing can ever take from him his position in the first rank 
and stature of the public men of our country. He will be in- 
voluntarily remembered and honored among the class of states- 
men of America for whom the conditions surrounding were so 
fashioned that they did not become Presidents. He was one 
of the very few the people expected to reach the Presidency, 
by reason of his strength and personal primacy, and were dis- 
appointed that he did not. It was a distinction for him, as 
for Clay and Webster, not to be President. 

Mr. Phelps had been renominated for Congress by his 
party by acclamation. His own canvass called for little 
personal attention and gave him no concern. In working 
for the cause in the whole State, he assumed that he was 
doing all that was required for his district. He was re- 
elected by a greatly increased plurality. The Republican 
plurality in the district for the electoral ticket was 1882; 
the plurality for Mr. Phelps, 2244 — the largest that had 
ever been given in the district for any candidate. 

Greatly exhausted mentally and physically by the 
ceaseless labor of the campaign, Mr. Phelps was so 
grieved over the result on the Presidency that he scarcely 
welcomed his own proud victory with joy. The attach- 
ment of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Phelps to each other was 
sincere and disinterested, but their political fortunes could 
hardly be otherwise than somewhat interwoven. There 
was nothing better understood in political circles during 
Mr. Blaine's candidacy for President than that, if suc- 
cessful, his faithful adherent of long standing from New 
Jersey would have the first place in the Cabinet. When 
the latter was at Bar Harbor, Mr. Blaine handed him a 
sealed envelope, telling him not to open it unless the 
writer, Mr. Blaine, should be elected President. There 
is no doubt that in this letter Mr. Phelps was told that 
he would be made Secretary of State. The letter was 



His Life and Public Services 153 

of course returned to Mr. Blaine unopened, and if Mr. 
Phelps ever knew of its contents, the knowledge was 
never divulged. 

In less than a month after the election, Mr, Phelps was 
in his seat at the opening of the second and short session 
of the Forty-eighth Congress. One of his first actions 
was the introduction of a joint resolution, providing that 
the Government take steps to enable the people and pro- 
ducers of the United States to be represented in the Ex- 
position to be held at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1885. This 
resolution was favorably received and a bill giving the 
President ample power to appoint commissioners, and to 
use the national ships to convey exhibits to this Exposi- 
tion, passed both houses. 

In the prolonged discussion on the Inter-State Com- 
merce Bill in January, Mr. Phelps and the author of the 
bill, Mr. Reagan of Texas, became engaged in a contro- 
versy of a personal character, which grew out of an attack 
upon the New Jersey Congressman relating to his invest- 
ments in railroad-building years before in Texas. The 
latter, in his reply, attested the bad faith of the Texas 
legislature in repudiating its promises and obligations to 
Northern capitalists who had built railroads in Texas of 
incalculable value in developing the agricultural regions 
of that State. Mr. Phelps's well-known readiness in de- 
bate never served him better than in this encounter, where 
it enabled him to turn the tables upon his assailant and 
place him in a most awkward position, by proving that his 
extensive farm lands had been made immensely more 
valuable by the railroad that Mr. Phelps and his associate 
capitalists had built through them, for which Mr. Reagan 
paid nothing, while it cost the builders millions of dollars, 
without their ever having received a cent of the money 
promised as compensation. 

Efficient support was given by Mr. Phelps to the efforts 
made at this session, which were successful, in finally set- 
tling the long-standing French Spoliation Claims. These 



154 William Walter Phelps 

claims grew out of the hostilities between France and 
England during, or shortly after, our war of the Revo- 
lution, when French cruisers seized vessels manned by 
English-speaking sailors without any discrimination. The 
owners of American merchant vessels made a claim against 
France for damages aggregating $20,000,000. France 
presented an offset of $280,000,000 for our violation of 
certain treaty stipulations. In the settlement between 
the two countries the United States assumed the pay- 
ment of the American ship-owners and merchants. In- 
stead of promptly and honestly fulfilling its obligations, 
our Government for eighty years dodged the payment of 
the claims of its own citizens. The pending bill provided 
that all those alleged obligations should be referred to our 
Court of Claims, and if they were found just, there could 
be found no further decent or even possible excuse for 
not paying them. The opposition to the bill took the 
ground that as all the original claimants were dead, it was 
illegal and an unnecessary act of extravagance to pay their 
heirs and assignees anything at this late day. Mr. Phelps 
was next to the last to address the House in this long de- 
bate. In reviewing the case of the claimants he said: 

This is certainly a piece of ancient history, but none the 
worse for its age, if it be a true piece. We are now at the end 
of the nineteenth century providing for the debts of the eigh- 
teenth. If they are just this delay is the strongest reason for 
our action; and that they are just I honestly believe, and to 
that conclusion public opinion has at last settled. Fortunately 
the origin of these claims is so simple that the obscurity of the 
past cannot becloud it. 

They followed the different Congresses down the century 
and got what? Forty reports, of which thirty-eight were 
favorable and the other two decidedly unfavorable. They got 
committed in the reports which they prepared the greatest 
lawyers of the age — Webster, Clayton, Choate, Everett, Sum- 
ner, Cushing, each preparing one or more reports indorsing 



His Life and Public Services 155 

the legality of the case. Their minds were too robust to find 
in the ingenious but minute objection of my young friend from 
Wisconsin any obstacle to bar. 

But these waking claimants got no money. It is time now 
that they did; and our committee to-day are taking a first step, 
not a long one, in the direction of giving them some. We are 
sending their claims to the Court of Claims, that they may 
there be judicially examined and judicially stated. And when 
they come out in legal shape I hope, and I hope that the House 
wishes, that the moral claim which they will have to payment 
may be promptly recognized. There are but two substantial 
objections. They tell us the claims are stale and assigned. 
Mr. Speaker, will there ever be a private claim against this 
Government which will not be so delayed as to be stale? Will 
there ever be a number of citizens, owning claims, who will 
not in this delay be forced by their necessities to sell their 
rights? But delay when the Government only is at fault and 
assignment are no bars to legal claimants. And these claims 
have the rights of law, not the charities of equity. 

The bill was passed and our government at last paid 
all the genuine claimants their honest dues. 

In the consideration of the annual Post Office Appro- 
priation Bill, one of the leading subjects that was under 
discussion was the amount that should be appropriated 
for compensating American steamships for carrying mails 
to foreign ports, which involved the question of building 
up the American m.arine through the aid of government 
subsidies. Mr. Phelps, in his Congressional career, from 
first to last was a strenuous advocate of liberal appropria- 
tions for this service. He addressed the House several 
times during this discussion, and gave a great deal of in- 
formation relating to the policy of other governments in 
securing foreign trade by financial assistance to their mail- 
carrying vessels. In support of an amendment that he 
proposed to offer to increase the amount of the appro- 
priation named in the bill for American mail steamships, 
he said : 



156 William Walter Phelps 

This is surely not too much to expend for objects every way 
worthy, and especially dear at this time to the hearts of Amer- 
ican people. It is to revive American commerce and to re- 
create the merchant marine of which our fathers were so 
proud. The sum is small compared with the vast sum spent 
by our rivals in this great enterprise. They give all their net 
revenue; more, they add to it all their treasuries will allow. 

He then gave statistics of the amounts paid by the 
European governments, great and small, to their mail 
steamers, and the amount of trade that these nations had 
gained by this policy, while the amounts appropriated by 
us were insignificant in comparison and our foreign trade 
correspondingly small. He said in addition that non- 
manufacturing countries, like the South American states 
and the countries in the Far East, are the markets for 
which civilizations compete. We can secure them only 
by sending our flag and our mail bags. Trade never 
fails to follow the flag. It is the pioneer that opens the 
way, and when the way is open, American manufacturers 
will walk profitably in it. The Peninsula and Oriental 
Steamship Company of Great Britain has for years re- 
ceived millions of pounds from that government, in return 
for which it carried the flag of Great Britain to the East 
and brought hundreds of millions of dollars to British 
commerce. To sustain his views, Mr. Phelps arrayed 
facts and figures bearing upon the subject under discus- 
sion with skill and potency, and the correctness of his 
statements the anti-subsidy advocates made no attempt 
to dispute. It must be recalled to the memory that this 
was a House with a large Democratic majority, and that 
the general policy of that party was opposition to all sub- 
sidies. But by sheer persistency, importuning, and intel- 
lectual force, the friends of American ships and commerce 
did succeed in the very last hours of the session in squeez- 
ing out of this reluctant House a moderate appropriation 
for mail subsidies. A few hours later, a Democratic ad- 
ministration was installed in power for the first time since 



His Life and Public Services 157 

the Civil War, and the Democratic Postmaster-General 
refused to devote this money to the use for which it was 
voted. In a speech at a mass meeting, during a subse- 
quent Congress, in which the House was again Demo- 
cratic, Mr. Phelps alluded to this incident when saying: 

England stands first in the commerce of the world, having 
given §240,000,000 to her commerce, and she now holds forty- 
two per cent, of the commerce of the world. She carries 
15,000,000 tons of our merchandise. She is not alone in her 
behef in a generous pohcy. Germany has contributed $i, loo,- 
000 to her commerce, and France has followed in her tracks. 
We, to-day, need the business of South America, but we can- 
not get from the Democrats the grant of a single subsidy. We 
did get a gift of $800,000, and that at three o'clock in the 
morning after a great struggle, and then a Democratic Post- 
master-General refused to use it. 

Mrs. Phelps and Miss Phelps were at the Washington 
home during the session this year and all participated in 
the social life at the national capital, so the winter months 
passed pleasantly and quickly by. 

After the inauguration of the new President, Mr. Cleve- 
land, a trip to Florida was made by Mr. and Mrs. Phelps 
before returning to Teaneck. 

Early in July Mr. Phelps went to California, stopping 
on the way to view with critical interest all the sights and 
wonders of the Rocky Mountain region. He spent July 
and August at the Villa that was then a noted hotel on the 
San Gabriel Mountains, near Pasadena. Senator and Mrs. 
Don Cameron were also guests at the hotel and afforded 
congenial companionship. Mr. Phelps wrote from there 
that he liked California ; that his health was very much 
improved, and that he was pleased to know that he 
weighed one hundred and forty-six pounds in his "riding 
suit." In September he journeyed over most of the State 
of California, and as he was known personally or by repu- 
tation to many of the proprietors of the large estates, he 



158 William Walter Phelps 

became by invitation their guest. From the Hotel Del 
Monte he wrote to his superintendent at Teaneck: 

I was n't going to write to you at all, but Miss Marian says 
everything on the farm looks so well that it occurs to me that 
I should be ungrateful if I did n't send you a line. This 
climate is wonderful. They grow grapes, oranges, and figs, 
yet no one need ever suffer with cold or heat. It agrees 
wonderfully with me and I have gotten through the summer 
with less inconvenience than for a long time. I have visited 
the estates of these great millionaires. They spend ten thou- 
sand to our one thousand. But from the lack of good taste, 
their results are not so satisfactory as ours, always excepting 
that they pay extravagantly to get water, and I am inclined to 
think that there they are wise. 

Ending his stay in California, he visited Oregon, and 
returned to New Jersey to begin work in the fall cam- 
paign in that State. He made speeches in several of the 
principal cities and was gratified that the election resulted 
in a Republican majority in both branches of the legis- 
lature. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Elected to Forty-ninth Congress by Increased Plurality — First Efforts to 
Raise Embargo on American Pork in Europe — Arbitration in Labor 
Troubles — American Mail Steamship Appropriation — Favors In- 
demnity for Outrage on Chinese — Oleomargarine Campaign — He 
Champions the Cause of the Dairy Farmers — Declines to Become 
Candidate for Governor of New Jersey 

WHEN the roll was called in the House at the first 
meeting of the Forty-ninth Congress, December 
7, 1885, Mr. Phelps answered to his name. The House 
was again Democratic, but by a less majority than of the 
last Congress. The Representative from the Fifth Dis- 
trict of New Jersey was reappointed to his old committees 
and again named as one of the Regents of the Smith- 
sonian Institute. At the beginning of the session there 
was an animated and prolonged debate over the revision 
of the rules. In the debates, Mr. Phelps earnestly advo- 
cated proposed amendments which would give the leading 
committees less latitude in forcing legislation and leaving 
more power to the House itself. 

He offered at this session a resolution relating to the 
restrictions imposed by the authorities of certain Euro- 
pean countries upon the importation into those countries 
of American pork. Later he presented a memorial from 
the State Board of Agriculture of New Jersey upon this 
subject, which he accompanied with a resolution that the 
Secretary of State be "requested to transmit copies of 
all correspondence between his Department and the rep- 
resentatives of France, Germany, Austria, and any other 
European country which has partially or entirely restricted 

159 



i6o William Walter Phelps 

the importation of American pork, rcfcrrini^ to the facts 
of such exclusion or restriction and the reasons therefor." 

The resolution was adopted, and this was the first action 
of a practical nature made in our Congress to do away 
with the exclusion of American pork from European 
countries, a movement in which Mr. Phelps a few years 
later took such a notable part. 

Another measure to which he gave aid was the Arbi- 
tration Bill, which was designed to promote the speedy 
settlement of controversies and difficulties between com- 
mon carriers engaged in inter-State commerce and trans- 
portation and their employees. This would affect nearly 
all the railroad employees in the country. While speak- 
ing on the bill, he said : 

I have no fear that the working men of this country will not 
get all their rights. It is only a question of time and manner; 
and, f(^r my part, I do not dread the result, but I do dread the 
processes, and I would do what I could to make these more 
orderly and more efficient. 

The working man will get the rights that he lacks, just as 
he got those he has, by public opinion. He will attract, per- 
suade, and convince the public. But the processes by which 
he gets his rights are naturally more or less wasteful, dis- 
orderly, and turbulent, because he gets his rights by proving 
his wrongs. He uses every effort to get public attention for, 
public sympathy with, and public recognition and conviction 
of his wrongs. As soon as he convinces the public of his 
wrongs the public gives him his rights so promptly, so fully, 
that he does not need court or Legislature. Society awards 
them in a flash. 

Is not this the splendid record of labor's achievement in the 
])ast? \Vhy shall it not be the experience of the future? 
When the workman, anxious to obtain a right, starts to con- 
vince the public he moves with the zeal of long repression. 
His success at first is too great. He masses and exhibits his 
wrongs in such shape of enormity and number that he himself 
is surprised and indignant, while unfortunately the public is 
made only more incredulous. So the spectacle which makes 



His Life and Public Services i6i 

the working man most impatient for action and redress makes 
the people slower and more reluctant to give it. Hence 
friction. This is the dangerous stage of the process. This is 
the stage we should unite all our efforts to eliminate, to shorten, 
at least to modify in its extremest manifestations. And this 
we can do only by suggesting or providing the way and means 
by which the working man can more quickly prove his wrongs. 
Methods are needed by which he can quickly, clearly, and 
conspicuously make his case and discover and publish its 
merits. This is the stage where this bill enters and this is its 
method. It provides a method by which the working man 
may more quickly prove and advertise his wrongs. 

When the Post-Office Appropriation Bill was being dis- 
cussed, Mr. Phelps renewed the efforts he made at the 
previous session for liberal appropriations for American 
mail-carrying steamships, and he made sharp attacks 
upon the enemies of American shipping. His power in 
this long debate was very sensibly felt. When these dis- 
cussions were pending, he had occasion to say : 

I am one of those who voted in the last Congress to authorize 
the Postmaster-General to give $400,000 to American vessels 
for carrying the foreign mails. It was not much compared 
with the millions that England, France, and Germany gave, 
but it was a step in the right direction, so it was a gain. It 
inaugurated a new policy. It accomplished two purposes dear 
to the American heart: It fostered American manufacturers by 
getting them their share in the new markets of the world; and 
American shipping, by giving it protection against foreign com- 
petition. So we were glad to vote for it; the gladder, because 
it was about the only opportunity that Congress, with eighty 
Democratic majority, gave us to vote for anything the people 
wanted. And what good came of it all? Enghsh ships still 
carry our mails; English sailors still get our money. Why? 
Did the President veto the measure? Was the Treasury un- 
able to furnish the money? No. One of his Secretaries 
repealed the provision. He pitied a Congress which could 
not see the force of objections four times rehearsed to them, 



1 62 William Walter Phelps 

corrected their judgment, and overruled their decisions. And 
we are, alas! without consolation or redress. . . . I know 
well enough that the friends of American industry on the sea 
and land are, by reason of an ecclesiastical blunder for which 
they are not to blame, made powerless to do anything except 
protest, and I only rise up to protest in their name against 
this irregular veto, which is as insulting to the dignity of Con- 
gress as it is harmful to the business of the American people. 

On another date in the discussion he went into an able 
illustration, quoting facts and figures to show how vastly 
the trade and commerce of other nations had been bene- 
fitted at our expense, through their policy of fostering 
their steamship lines. He showed that the prices paid 
to our steamship companies for carrying the mails were 
much lower for the same amount of service than were 
paid by any other nation. He then supplemented his 
arguments by saying: 

This measure has so many advantages, it supplies so many 
wants, we ought promptly to adopt it. We want steamships; 
this measure will give them. We want markets for our sur- 
plus; this measure will give them. We want to defend our 
coasts; this measure will give us a merchant marine — the 
militia of the sea. Why should we refuse to pass a measure 
so useful and so reasonable because its enemies call it a sub- 
sidy? It is not a subsidy, for it is neither a gift nor an exces- 
sive payment. It is a fair payment to American ships for 
carrying the mails, to secure the foreign trade, and the foreign 
markets that we want and need. 

When the River and Harbor Rill was about to be voted 
upon and the Representative from the Newark district 
in New Jersey was struggling to increase the insuflRcicnt 
amount named in the bill for improving the Passaic River, 
Mr. Phelps went to his assistance, and his influence with 
the House helped to increase the needed appropriation. 
As usual, he had solid facts and figures at his ready com- 
mand, and he gave the House some weighty reasons why 



His Life and Public Services 163 

New Jersey's most important water-way should be treated 
more justly than was proposed. In his argument he said : 

The city of Newark has 150,000 inhabitants, all at work ex- 
cept those who are in the cradle or the grave. There are four- 
teen hundred large factories, and in them or about them labor 
forty thousand workmen every day. Most of them may be 
Knights of Labor. If they are, I hope they are watching the 
votes of Representatives here to-day. This hive of industry 
gives to commerce every year seventy million dollars' worth 
of a varied industry. But this vast trade and commerce call 
for better accommodations. Newark lies on the banks of the 
Passaic, three or four miles from Newark Bay. The river is 
broad, but its channel is narrow. Up and down this river 
passed last year twenty-two thousand vessels. They have to 
pass each other painfully and slowly, as in a canal. A canal 
may be picturesque, but it is not fitted for a business like this. 
The Chief Engineer proposes to make it a practicable water- 
way. He says for $125,000 he will make it two hundred feet 
wide and ten feet deep. It ought to be done. This commit- 
tee ought to vote the appropriation. I ask it not for this State 
or this city only. I ask it for a general commerce. 

President Cleveland, in March, sent a message to Con- 
gress in which he called attention to the outrages perpe- 
trated by a mob upon peaceful Chinese living in what 
was then the Territory of Wyoming. In our treaty with 
China, the United States were under obligations to in- 
demnify the victims of such acts of violence. A bill for 
this purpose was before the House. Under the rule, 
there were but ten minutes allowed to each speaker. In 
this time, Mr. Phelps made one of the most potent and 
statesmanlike of all his speeches in Congress. In referring 
to the victims of this outbreak, he remarked : 

Their houses were burned; their goods pillaged; twenty- 
eight of them were killed and fifteen wounded. The only 
provocation was that they would not join in a strike. We 
should pay for the property destroyed, not for charity's sake, 



i64 William Walter Phelps 

but for the solid reason that it is an international obligation 
and a single reciprocity for a hundred cases where China has 
paid an indemnity to us in cases less monstrous than this. 

The history of our diplomatic relations with China for nearly 
fifty years has been only the history of prompt and greedy 
claims for indemnity on our part and of prompt and generous 
payment on its part. It has paid for the rights of every 
American citizen, when violated. It has paid for the violated 
rights of Chinese subjects when they were connected with 
ours; as when they paid a Chinese landlord, whose house was 
destroyed by a mob, because an American leased it, and as 
when they paid for the property and clothing of native helpers, 
which were lost in the service of American missionaries. This 
is the way China paid indemnities up to 1858. In this fashion 
she paid them in detail, then she paid them in gross. She 
took more than $700,000, gave it to the United States Govern- 
ment and said, " Take this and pay your countrymen." We 
took it, we paid all claims generously, with twelve per cent, 
interest; but the generosity of China was so ample that after 
all this we had left nearly one third of the original sum to re- 
turn to China. China did this and shamed the grudging spirit 
in which Christian countries pay their international bills. 

The speaker then discussed our legal liability in this 
case, urging the House to take this opportunity to show 
our disposition to keep good faith under the solemn obli- 
gations of treaties with foreign powers. 

The bill was not passed at this session, but at the ses- 
sion following Congress voted an ample sum in reparation 
for this territorial lawlessness. 

This session of Congress was a very long one, extend- 
ing into August, and the work of the active members 
was unusually heavy. Mr. Phelps had introduced and 
passed a large number of meritorious private bills, and 
was instrumental in pushing through several important 
measures, not perhaps of national interest, but for the 
benefit of different localities in New Jersey. He made 
frequent arguments before the House in furtherance of 



His Life and Public Services 165 

measures of interest to his own and other constituencies 
of his State. He took especial interest in promoting 
legislation for the establishment of government powder 
works near Dover, N. J. ; the building of a railroad and 
passenger bridge over Arthur's Kill to connect New Jer- 
sey with Staten Island, and for the protection of fisheries 
on the coast of New Jersey. 

One of the questions of the greatest consequence which 
occupied the attention of the House this session was that 
of the tariff. The Democratic majority of the House 
was intent upon the reduction of the tariff then existing 
to a point that would be injurious to all American manu- 
facturers, and ruinous to several of the special industries 
of New Jersey. Mr. Morrison, who had succeeded Mr. 
Randall as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, 
and was therefore the leader of the majority, concentrated 
at last all the efforts of his party for the reduction of im- 
port duties upon what was called a horizontal bill, which 
enlarged the free list and provided for a cut of twenty- 
five per cent, indiscriminately upon all articles left on the 
tariff schedule. The struggle over this measure was a 
determined and vigorous one on each side. The energies 
of the Republican leaders were taxed to their utmost to 
maintain a protective system under which the industries 
of the nation were flourishing, and labor was remunera- 
tive. When the vote was taken, the Morrison bill was 
defeated by a very close shave. It would have been 
carried only for the support of thirty-five protectionist 
Democrats under the leadership of Samuel J. Randall. 
As an evidence of the temper of the Democratic party on 
this subject, out of the thirty-five followers of Mr. Ran- 
dall on this vote, only ten were returned to the succeed- 
ing Congress, 

The dairy farmers all over the country now took action 
to have a law made that would prevent the sale of oleo- 
margarine as butter. So great a public interest had been 
aroused by the contest in Congress on this question in 



i66 William Walter Phelps 

the winter and spring of 1886 that it was referred to as 
the "oleomargarine campaign." The dair^' and butter- 
making interests in some parts of New Jersey were very 
important, and the representation from that State in both 
branches of the national legislature was alive to them. 
Mr. Phelps, when the subject was introduced, appeared 
before the Committee on Agriculture in behalf of the 
New Jersey farmers, and after some delay, a bill satis- 
factory to the farming and dairy interests was reported to 
the House, and before the close of the session, but after 
strong opposition, it became a law. 

A letter was sent to Mr. Phelps, signed by the Presi- 
dent of the American Agricultural and Dair}^ Association, 
which thanked him in the name of the organization for 
his support of the bill and said that he had rendered the 
dairy farmers of America an inestimable service by his 
well directed efTorts and arduous labors in behalf of the 
measure. It continues: 

You are entitled to their lasting gratitude. The passage of 
the bill is of the utmost importance to them, and they are de- 
lighted to know that they have representatives in Congress 
such as yourself, who appreciate their necessities and have a 
lively concern for their interest and the interest of the country 
at large. I hope that the farmers of America will see that 
they are represented in Congress by such men as yourself, re- 
gardless of politics. I express not only my sentiments, but 
those of the butter and cheese trade of New York and other 
cities, besides 5,000,000 of dairy farmers. 

When portraying the abilities and standing of the indi- 
vidual members of this House, the Washington corre- 
spondent of the Chicago Journal wrote: "A careful 
observer and a member who has been here a long; time 
says that not one in ten of the members are listened 
to when they speak. He intimates that about seven 
members of each party direct the whole business." In 
noting this Harper s Weekly gave five of those on the 



His Life and Public Services 167 

Republican side as: Reed, Hiscock, McKinley, Phelps, 
and Long. 

In personal allusions to the House at this date, the 
Philadelphia Bulletin published this: 

In this Congress Mr. Phelps spoke frequently and with 
marked success. The Right Honorable Mr. Forster, the old 
Cabinet friend of Mr. Gladstone, whose recent death was so 
much deplored, spent some weeks at this time in Washington 
for the purpose of studying American parliamentary debate. 
He stated subsequently to Mr. Morton, late minister to 
France, that in neither House of Congress had he heard any 
one speak with so much effect as Mr. Phelps. 

In the winter of 1886, the House of Assembly of the 
State of New Jersey, accompanied by its Speaker and 
other officers and several State officials, paid a visit to 
Washington. They were handsomely entertained by Mr. 
Phelps and he gave them a reception at his home which 
afforded an opportunity to the Jersey legislators to meet 
well-known Senators and Representatives and distin- 
guished officials and personages who were invited to be 
present. 

As Congress was drawing to a close in the last days of 
July, Mr. Phelps started across the water for a few weeks' 
stay at Carlsbad, a place always beneficial to his health. 

The long session of the House of 1886 made such a 
demand upon the energies of Mr. Phelps that he found it 
impossible, except in a few instances, to accept the many 
requests made of him to deliver addresses here and there 
and upon a great variety of subjects. But he found time 
to make a pleasing speech at a great Irish Liberty meeting 
held in Washington to encourage the Home Rule cause 
in Ireland, that was then advocated by Mr. Gladstone. 
He took the view that when a Prime Minister of England 
arose in Parliament to offer a bill to do justice to Ire- 
land, it was evident that the world's public opinion was 



1 68 William Walter Phelps 

influencing the noblest and best in England to help redress 
the wrongs of centuries, and that this would continue until 
it finally compelled the granting of local self-government 
and independence to the Irish people. 

Invited by the Grand Army of the Republic, Mr. 
Phelps delivered an oration on Memorial Day before a 
large gathering of people at Mt. Holly, New Jersey. It 
was an address that was widely quoted. After treating 
upon the topics immediately suggested by the occasion, 
he declared that peace had its dangers no less than war, 
and that the soldiers of the Grand Army should be ready 
to meet them. He mentioned one of these dangers to 
be a neglect of political duties by a class of good men, 
because of a fear of being called politicians. He declared 
it to be the duty of every man to do political work for 
the community in which he and his family live, and also 
for the whole country if need be: 

The men who made and signed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and afterward framed our Constitution, were 
farmers, doctors, clergymen, and lawyers — men working with 
brain or hand — and so representatives of the toiling millions 
for whom our government is formed — made politics a study 
and a duty, and we cannot do better than to follow their ex- 
ample. Any other course involves disaster to the public weal. 

He had some good words to say for Congress in con- 
tradiction of the thoughtless and flippant criticisms so 
often published, that Congress holds unnecessarily long 
sessions, prolix and tedious debates, and works too 
slowly. He contended that Congressional debates were 
not time wasted. That Congress confers other benefits 
upon the land besides making laws. Its discussions edu- 
cate the press and the people on public questions, and 
no debate is fruitless, no matter wliat its termination may 
be. He said : 

Our country is large, our people many, our interests diversi- 
fied and often conflicting; and it takes time to consider and 



His Life and Public Services 169 

ascertain the middle ground, where justice dwells, and decide 
what is for the greatest good of the greatest number. 

He referred to the fear that often exists that accumu- 
lated wealth is a danger to the government. From this 
source can be seen no serious danger: 

Inequahties of fortune must exist until all men are created 
with the same tastes and capacities; they are evils which the 
ballot cannot cure. Destroy our present form of government, 
and change our present society, and the same inequalities 
would reappear in any structure built upon the ruins. They 
cannot be cured — they can be mitigated. Education will do 
the most toward it, and virtue and philanthropy — teaching the 
rich the duty of shaping their lives to the spirit of the Golden 
Rule, and teaching the poor the great truth that happiness, 
self-respect, and the respect of others may exist without money. 
The world, by education and experience, will yet learn the 
undoubted truth that Agur prayed for the best; and that the 
estate within the grasp of every one of our countrymen, that 
midway between riches and poverty, is the happiest of all 
conditions. 

In conclusion he paid a fine tribute to the Grand Army 
of the Republic, and praised them for the care they take 
to see that none of their comrades suffer. Cicero said : 
"The men who serve a nation are as worthy of honor as 
those who founded it," and this nation as long as it lives 
will do honor to the soldiers who saved it. 

The regard which the New Jersey orator had for those 
who fought to save the Union was not exhibited wholly 
in words. General John A. Logan, the gallant soldier 
and able statesman, died this year, while representing 
Illinois in the national Senate. He had given years to 
the service of his country and little time to acquiring 
wealth. His friends began an effort to raise a memorial 
fund to be given to Mrs. Logan. Mr. Phelps went to 
their aid immediately with a subscription of Sicxx), and 
was instrumental in having others of his acquaintance 



I70 William Walter Phelps 

contribute until the fund reached the generous sum of 
$64,000. 

Before Mr. Phelps went to Europe, the Republican 
leaders in New Jersey, who voiced the party sentiments, 
were desirous that he should be a candidate for <:overnor 
of the State. They believed that with a standard-bearer 
of his reputation and popularity, the long-time Demo- 
cratic majority of the State could be overcome. Mr. 
Phelps turned a deaf ear to all this solicitation. At no 
time did he have any aspiration for the governorship. 
He did not think his strength adequate to the exacting 
duties of that office. When he returned in September, 
and on the eve of the State convention, the nomination 
for governor was undoubtedly at his command, but he 
could not be moved from his first determination. He 
went to the convention, and furthered the nomination of 
his associate in the House of Representatives, Benjamin 
F. Howey. He was selected for permanent chairman of 
the convention and one of the newspaper reports thus 
describes the scene: 

A committee was appointed to escort Mr. Phelps to the plat- 
form, and he was greeted with the most enthusiastic applause. 
For a few minutes the Convention was a perfect pandemonium, 
and the delegates after tiring of using their hands and feet in 
applauding, wound up with three cheers for the Chairman. 
It was a magnificent ovation to Mr. Phelps and indicated in a 
marked manner his popularity and strength in the State. He 
made one of the most felicitous si)eeches ever delivered on a 
like occasion, and the wit and humor with which his remarks 
were interspersed kei)t his auditors in a manifestly happy 
humor. .Mr. Phelps was frequently interrupted by applause. 
One old gentleman remarked to us that Mr. Phelps was not a 
very large man, but he was a splendid speaker. He said: " I 
could listen to him all day." 

Mr. Howey was nominated and his friend from the 
Fifth Congressional District took an active interest in his 



't>' 



His Life and Public Services 171 

campaign, speaking in behalf of Mr. Howey frequently 
both in and out of his own district. 

While Mr. Phelps was abroad, the delegates to the 
Congressional convention in his district had been elected. 
No other man was thought of as a candidate, and no other 
was named in the convention, which was held in Paterson, 
and was a combination of nominating convention, ovation, 
and jubilee. The nominee addressed the convention, and 
his first words were these: 

I shall not attempt to conceal, gentlemen, the satisfaction I 
feel in this hearty greeting. For nearly twenty years I have 
thought a great deal of this district, and I am naturally much 
pleased when I see any sign that the district thinks something 
of me. Nominated five times for Congress, though rotation 
is the rule and the custom in it, and receiving this fifth nomi- 
nation, as I have done to-day, with absolute unanimity and 
without solicitation or effort or care on my part, and even 
without my presence in the country during the preparations 
for it, I cannot but feel it a matter of honorable pride, and I 
know that it will be a fresh spur to my efforts to advance its 
interests. . . . You put me in office almost in my boy- 
hood. You have had patience with all my shortcomings and 
your confidence in me continues. It is nearly twenty years 
since, over in the old Opera House, I first spoke to the people 
of this district of the principles which would control my po- 
litical course. I have rehearsed them often enough since. I 
do not know that I have changed one of them, and if to-day I 
take a few minutes of your time to recapitulate them it is be- 
cause these principles are the principles of the Republican 
party and constitute a creed with which we cannot be too 
familiar. 

At the election the Republican candidate for Congress 
swept the district as he had never done before, leading 
his Democratic opponent in each of the counties, and 
with a total plurality of 2836. 

In December the post of the Grand Army of the Re- 
public located at Westwood, Bergen County, went to 



1/2 William Walter Phelps 

Washington to place a marble tablet over the grave in 
Arlington Cemetery of their venerated brigade-comman- 
der in the War of the Rebellion, General Gabriel R. Paul. 
Congressman Phelps, who was already in Washington, 
was called upon to deliver the address at the ceremonial. 
There was a gathering of prominent Jerseymen, and Mr. 
Phelps spoke under the trees and in the snow, briefly but 
feelingly and eloquently. The veterans went back to 
their homes pleased with the attentions they had received, 
and with the success of their noble undertaking. 

Two weeks later, December 22d, at the annual dinner 
of the New England Society in New York, he was one of 
the invited speakers, and the toast to which he responded 
was "Our Congress." Here he again took the oppor- 
tunity to speak favorably of the merits of Congress and 
in commendation of the ability and honesty of his fellow- 
legislators. 



CHAPTER XVII 

New Year's Reception at Teaneck Grange — Description of the Grand and 
Famous Mansion — The Art Gallery — Mr. Phelps's Marked Social 
Characteristics — A Most Pleasing Host — Unique Banquet to U. S. 
Senator Hiscock — Writes a Noted Biography of Garfield — Helps to 
Secure Sea Girt to the State — His Political Prominence in New 
Jersey — Friends Put forth His Claims for U. S. Senate — Speaks 
to the Manufacturing Jewellers' Association 

AT the close of the year 1886, Mr. Phelps found that the 
quaint old Dutch farmhouse that he had first chosen 
for his New Jersey home, through making additions for 
many years under the supervision of a skilful architect, 
had at last been transformed to his liking and stood a 
completed residence. The last addition — the large pic- 
ture-gallery, which also was to be used as a dancing 
hall — had been finished and all the pictures hung. He 
thought, therefore, that on January i, 1887, there should 
be something more than his ordinary New Year's recep- 
tion — an open house in its fullest sense, to mark the 
event. His friends far and near were invited, and it was 
understood that all Jerseymen would be heartily welcome. 
The consequence was that it became a day made memor- 
able for many of his Bergen County neighbors, as well as 
for political guests and prominent personages and officials 
from more remote parts of the State, who mingled in a 
joyous throng that overflowed the extensive apartments, 
partook of his hospitality, and joined in praise of all they 
saw and admired. 

The mansion was especially noticeable and attractive 
because of its dissimilarity to the prevailing architecture 

173 



174 William Walter Phelps 

of the locality ; it was original in design and arrangement, 
with distinctive features, but its exterior lines gave no 
adequate hint of the elegance and taste reigning within. 
Its length was about three hundred and fifty feet, with a 
width varying from twenty-five to fifty feet, and one or 
two stories in height. The room forming the north end 
was the combined office, workshop, and private retreat 
of Mr. Phelps. It occupied the width of the building, 
with high wooden ceiling. A fireplace in which a tall 
man could stand erect received great logs of wood that 
blazed and crackled on massive andirons, filling the place 
with generous warmth and peaceful glow. From the 
centre of the room a staircase extended to a bedroom 
above, where Mr. Phelps frequently retired after a long 
night's work without disturbing the family. Built in the 
head-board of the bed was a wooden pillow used by Mr. 
Phelps's great-grandfather, Captain David Phelps, in the 
Revolutionary War. This apartment was a platform 
rather than a room, as it was merely surrounded with a 
railing and not partitioned off. From the bed nearly the 
whole room below was in view and the moving shadows 
cast by the blazing logs were a soothing charm to the 
wearied toiler. This private combination-room, although 
furnished with extreme modesty, was one of the most 
interesting to visitors because it was so characteristic of 
the man whose personality was impressed upon every de- 
tail of its arrangement. 

Next came the library, an oblong low-ceilinged room the 
width of the house, with another large fireplace, faced by 
a fine-meshed brass fender. The ceiling was finished in 
oak. On three sides the walls were hidden by bookcases 
holding one of the most complete private libraries in the 
State, books on every subject of value to the scholar and 
the statesman, and comprising the working tools of the 
master mind. 

Ascending two steps the hall of the old farmhouse was 
entered. It ran from east to west, with a broad staircase 



His Life and Public Services 175 

reaching to the second floor. Then came the richly fur- 
nished parlor, on the east side of which ran a corridor 
south to the large dining-room, an apartment with light 
on three sides, including a great bay-window that served 
as a breakfast-room. Here some of the rare views for 
which Teaneck Grange was so often praised by visitors 
stretched across the broad lawns through tree clumps, 
coppice, or shrubbery. Sleeping-rooms and a music- 
room connected with the dining-room. From the music- 
room a second staircase led to the extension, and from the 
upper landing another flight of stairs descended to the 
grand picture-gallery, the glory of the house. 

The upper floor of the extension was devoted to sleep- 
ing apartments, each furnished in different style and all 
entered from a corridor on the western side. In the 
basement was the billiard-room, kitchen, servants' apart- 
ments, and laundry. 

The picture-gallery was at the southwestern extremity 
of the building, and was built of stone. Its high walls 
were covered with pictures chiefly by modern artists of 
celebrity and recognized merit. One of the most gen- 
erally admired of these was "Damascus," by Church, a 
companion to which was a bold landscape of mountain 
and lake with three hunters in the foreground. Another 
picture, by an unknown artist, fascinated all who visited 
the gallery. It was the head and bust of a young Vene- 
tian girl reclining on a pillow, with face of marvellous 
color and expression, and eyes that seemed to follow the 
observer about the room. A stage-coach race, and a 
Russian officer attacked by robbers while driving across 
the plains, were examples of spirited animation on canvas 
of which there were several. Conspicuous on the east 
wall was a fine full-length portrait of James G. Blaine, 
which was one of Mr. Phelps's most highly prized pictures. 
On the south wall, an old Dutch garden, with its rich- 
colored flowering plants, won much praise. At the op- 
posite end of the gallery, to the left of the staircase on 



176 William Walter Phelps 

entering, was a painting that had an admirer in nearly 
every person who saw it. It illustrated a scene in one of 
John Hay's poems, representing Jim Bludsoc, pilot of 
the Mississippi River steamboat Prairie Belle, with his 
hands on the wheel, crying through the smoke and flame 
that enveloped and was consuming him : "I '11 hold 
her nozzle ag'in the bank 'till the last galoot's ashore." 
The realism of the subject appealed strongly to all 
visitors. 

Perhaps the most conspicuously noted picture in the 
house, however, was a full-length portrait of James A. 
Garfield, companion to that of Mr. Blaine. It was hung 
in the front hall, near the foot of the staircase leading 
from the art gallery. It was the last picture ever taken 
of Mr. Garfield, and was in his room at Elberon until after 
his death, when it was presented to Mr. Phelps by Mrs. 
Garfield. 

The gallery was but the formal display of art works 
in the Teaneck home. Rare etchings, engravings, water- 
colors, oil paintings, tapestries, mosaics, carvings, bronzes, 
and other gems adorned the rooms and halls, while the 
floors were covered with fine rugs from many marts. All 
of the apartments of the house revealed that it was the 
cherished home of an extensive traveller, and one of 
means, for its owner was ever bringing to Teaneck curious 
and beautiful objects collected during his wanderings. 

It was under such conditions, with his home represent- 
ing the fruition of a dream of nearly two decades, that 
Mr. Phelps surrounded himself with neighbors, his most 
staunch and loyal supporters, and made merry all the 
New Year's day and evening. The threatening weather 
of the morning was succeeded by a clear and starlit sky, 
and for hours the crisp air carried the sounds of happy 
voices as the guests drove away to homes on hillside and 
in valley. Teaneck Grange was the scene of numerous 
gatherings, and many men and women of national repute 
were entertained within its hospitable walls; but no as- 



His Life and Public Services 177 

semblage ever gave more genuine pleasure to host and 
hostess than that which marked the opening of the com- 
pleted home. 

In size and general equipment this was the most com- 
modious residence in Northern New Jersey at the period. 
It was furnished with every convenience for comfort and 
promptness in service. Through frequent entertainment 
of distinguished people, and the somewhat elaborate social 
functions inseparable from the private and public life of 
a family whose head was associated with national and 
international affairs of state, Teaneck Grange attained a 
repute that soon constituted it one of the show-places of 
the land. Many strangers visited and admired it, capti- 
vated by the minarets, tall chimneys, corners, and swells 
that constituted the exterior, the central figure in a beau- 
tiful picture, and were charmed by the interior with its 
rich adornment of furniture, art, and curios. 

The large carriage house and stables, built to conform 
to the architecture of the residence, formed a near-by 
group of buildings that added to the picture viewed from 
a short distance, and presented an imposing aspect. 

The scene on the first day of January, 1887, was but 
typical of life at Teaneck whenever the master or the 
mistress was at home. It was said of Mr. Phelps, and 
repeated by many who knew him, that he had a "talent 
for friendships." He never desired loneliness anywhere. 
He was fond of entertaining visitors, and especially liked 
the company of bright men and women at his table, where 
in originality and genial humor he was unsurpassed as a 
conversationalist. He had an obvious and quiet enjoy- 
ment in all the oddities and drollnesses of life. Still, 
when dwelling upon events in the lives of others, he did 
not lack sympathy for all that was serious or tender. 
Surrounded by guests, with a half mischievous, but 
always merry twinkle in his eyes, he enjoyed directing 
the conversation so as to bring out the various phases in 
the characters of those present, to contrast them and 



1/8 William Walter Phelps 

mentally compare the impressions that the words and 
acts of each made upon the others. 

No one could excel him in his faculty of making all 
visitors at ease, and he was pleased and his enthusiasm 
aroused when they showed a desire to see what marvel- 
lous developments had been made on this great estate of 
so many acres and its surroundings. He never counted 
the moments lost that he spent in pointing out to visitors 
the pleasant places of his fair domain, and when the sight- 
seers were willing, he preferred, rather than riding, to 
walk with them over the clean earth, the sweetness of 
which was always grateful to his senses. 

This was the Phelps home at Teaneck in the fulness 
of its majesty. What a crowd of journalists and literary 
figures, men of affairs and men of state, and political bat- 
tlers — the greatest and the humblest — thronged to this 
shrine in the days of its plenitude and power! 

In the short session of the Forty-ninth Congress, which 
occupied the winter of 1887, Mr. Phelps took his usual 
active part in the work and the debates. He spoke ear- 
nestly for the bill promoting and encouraging reciprocal 
commercial relations with Mexico, Brazil, and the South 
American republics. With voice and influence he was 
foremost in the enactment of legislation which authori/xd 
the President to protest and defend the rights of Ameri- 
can fishing, trading, and other vessels, which was known 
as the "Fisheries Retaliation Bill." 

Congress ended in March and shortly before its close a 
dinner was given by Mr. Phelps in honor of his close 
friend. Representative Frank Hiscock, who had just been 
elected to the United States Senate by the legislature of 
New York. This entertainment was noticeably unique 
on account of the different characteristics and opposing 
political doctrines conspicuously held by those who were 
invited. But all were most genial and harmonious on this 
pleasant occasion. A special Washington dispatch pub- 
lished next day in all daily papers of the land said of it : 



His Life and Public Services 179 

Mr. William Walter Phelps's dinner to Senator-elect Frank 
Hiscock at Chamberlain's to-night brought together one of the 
most remarkable assemblages that have ever sat down to the 
same table in Washington. All ])arties, all factions, and nearly 
all professions were represented. Sir Lionel Sackville West 
was there at the right of the host, representing England. Mr. 
Watterson, who has said almost as many sharp things about 
the English aristocracy as he has about Mr. Randall, was be- 
side him. Mr. Randall himself was just over the way as pleas- 
ant as if he never had read any of Mr. Watterson's editorials, 
while around the table a little farther was Mr. Morrison, evi- 
dently forgetful of the fact that he had used the strongest 
language in the Democratic vocabulary to express his determi- 
nation that the new tariff bill should not go through. Secretary 
Lamar was there, entirely regardless of what other gentlemen 
at the table had said of his Interior Department, and Secretary 
Whitney also, with no visible grudge against Mr. Reed for his 
filibustering defeat of his cherished plan for reorganizing the 
naval department. 

Nobody but Mr. Phelps could have brought such a party 
together, and it is hardly going too far to say that nobody 
but Mr. Phelps could have kept their good humor continu- 
ous. In order to avoid any questions of precedence he 
had seated them around a circular table which made it dif- 
ficult to distinguish the head from the foot. As host he sat 
farthest from the doorway and had the guests of the evening 
directly opposite. Between them the other guests were ar- 
ranged in this way: On the right of Mr. Phelps Sir Lionel 
Sackville West, Henry Watterson, Senator Piatt, Senator 
Evarts, Mr. Morrison, Senator Sewell, Hon. Levi P. Morton, 
Murat Halstead, Chauncey Depew, and Secretary Lamar. On 
the left Speaker Carlisle, Whitelaw Reid, Samuel J. Randall, 
Justice Blatchford, General Phil Sheridan, Major McKinley, 
Mr. W. W. Astor, Thomas B. Reed, Secretary Whitney, and 
John Sherman. 

The speaking was not formal. Mr. Phelps proposed the 
only toast of the evening to the health of the Senator-elect, 
and Mr. Hiscock made the only formal response. After that 
the speeches followed pretty rapidly and each either made 



i8o William Walter Phelps 

part of the brilliant after-dinner talk that such an assemblage 
could produce or else alternated with it. 

The most of the summer of this year Mr, Phelps was 
in enjoyment of the attractions and comforts of his home 
and revelled in literary pleasures. It was during these 
weeks that he wrote for Appleton's Encyclopedia of Amer- 
ican Biography a sketch of the life of James A. Garfield. 
In a review of this volume of the Biography in a journal 
of high standing, this was said: 

Mr. Phelps's "Garfield " is a model which cyclopedia writers 
might well study. It is full without prolixity, animated with- 
out rhetorical flourish, concise without dryness, and abound- 
ing in evidences of an exceptional familiarity with the subject, 
which, however, never betrays the author into extravagant 
opinions. His account of General Garfield's military and po- 
litical career is equally striking in both chapters; and he deals 
with the controversies which preceded and followed the presi- 
dential election with entire frankness. In technical workman- 
ship the article is one of the best in the book. 

In August the State of New Jersey was in danger of 
losing its fine camp-ground at Sea Girt, because the owner 
raised his price to the extent of $20,000 more than the 
legislature had appropriated. Mr. Phelps gave $5000 to 
supply the deficiency ; others made up the remainder, and 
New Jersey secured one of the largest and best situated 
camp-grounds in the country. 

At this time the Congressman from the Fifth District 
held the highest place among the political leaders of New 
Jersey. His office in New York was a Mecca for the 
politicians of the State, who went there for consultation, 
information, and advice. The State Senators to be 
elected in 1887 would have a vote in the election for 
United States Senator in January, 1889. It was the 
urgent demand of the party managers that Mr. Phelps 
should permit himself to be announced as an aspirant for 



His Life and Public Services i8i 

that office, they believing that if he would speak ift the 
counties that were to elect Senators, a great gain would 
be made for the Republicans in the legislature. Mr. 
Phelps was becoming a little weary of the House and at 
that time a seat in the United States Senate would doubt- 
less have been acceptable to him. The Republican ma- 
jority in that body was a small one and its continuance 
uncertain. It became, therefore, important to gain a 
seat from New Jersey. Mr. Phelps yielded to the general 
desire of his fellow-partisans. He entered into the work 
energetically with body and soul, as he always did when 
he assumed any undertaking. He accepted appointments 
for speeches in all the pivotal counties and important 
centres. "Phelps Will Speak," naming the different 
places, was a displayed heading constantly in the news- 
papers. He delivered addresses without number at charity 
fairs, county fairs, soldiers' reunions, local conventions, 
and mass meetings. He was never wrought up to a 
higher pitch for political talk and work, and his activity 
aroused the ire of the Democratic journals, which declared 
that his utterances were "piquant and rampant," and 
that he was putting unwonted life into the campaign. 
He gave his critics additional cause for resentment by in- 
spiring his hearers with predictions of a splendid Repub- 
lican victory in the presidential election of the next year, 
and these prophecies were fulfilled. His efforts had a 
most marked effect, particularly in Democratic counties, 
in every one of which, where he made speeches, the Re- 
publican candidate for Senator was elected. The New 
York Sjin, in those years Democratic, commenting on 
the result of this election, said : 

We invite the attention of all who may be interested to the 
results of the quiet but very thorough canvass made in New 
Jersey a few weeks ago under the able leadership of Mr. 
William Walter Phelps. 

There was no State ticket to be elected. The voting was 
only for legislators; and the special interest which Mr. Phelps 



i82 William Walter Phelps 

and his friends felt in the result is partly explained by the fact 
that Mr. McPherson's term as United States Senator ends one 
year from next March, and partly by the fact that there is to 
be a presidential election in November of next year. The full 
official returns of last month's election in New Jersey are now 
at hand. They show what a Protectionist Republican leader 
can do in that State when he gives his mind to the work. 
They are therefore full of interest to Democrats, particularly 
just now. On the total vote for Assemblymen, the Protec- 
tionist Republicans, under Mr. Phelps's leadership, carried 
New Jersey by a plurality of 2,619 over the Democratic 
candidates. 

Mr. Phelps now thought that he had talked enough for 
that year. But the Manufacturing Jewellers' Association 
of New York gave a great dinner on December ist, at 
which Chauncey M. Depew, Abram S. Hewitt, and Gen- 
eral Sherman were to be among the orators. The man- 
agers insisted that Mr. Phelps should go and talk to them 
on the subject of "The American Union: Its Relations 
to, and Influence on the Nations of the World." He 
complied with their request and in his address pointed 
out several of the many instances, and some of them sur- 
prising, in which France, Germany, and other govern- 
ments of Europe have profited by the example set before 
them by our form of government and our Federal Union. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A Member of the Fiftieth Congress— Takes an Active Part in the Debates 
—Opposes the Mills Tariff Bill— Able Defence of the Industrial 
Interests of the Country— Advocates a Fractional Paper Currency — 
Sharp Criticism of the Democratic Administration for Abandoning 
the Cause of American Fisheries — Aids a Political Opponent — State 
of New Jersey Presents Statues of Richard Stockton and General 
Philip Kearny to Congress — Mr. Phelps Makes an Eloquent 
Presentation Speech — His Views on Paternalism 

THE first session of the Fiftieth Congress was one of 
the longest in the history of the country. It con- 
tinued from December 7, 1887, to October 20, 1888. 
The Democrats were again the ruHng power, but their 
majority was a small one. Mr. Carlisle was once more 
Speaker. Mr. Phelps retained his position on his old 
Committee on Foreign AfTairs, and was appointed for the 
third time to the Regency of the Smithsonian Institution. 

Mr. Morrison, of Illinois, the Democratic leader of the 
last House, was not a member of this Congress, and the 
chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee was 
given to Mr. Mills of Texas, who therefore became the 
majority leader. 

The most sagacious of the Democratic leaders in the 
country now realized that the preponderancy of their 
party in Congress was gradually slipping away and that 
Mr. Cleveland's administration was drawing to an end 
without any practical legislation to carry out the Demo- 
cratic doctrine of what was called "tariff reform." It 
was consequently demanded of the Democrats in Con- 
gress that they should use their utmost endeavors at this 

183 



I $4 William Walter Phelps 

session to reduce the duty on imports. The measure 
that was reported for this purpose by the Ways and 
Means Committee has gone into history notoriously as 
the "Mills Bill," and the struggle for its passage lasted 
until it was nearly time for the next session to meet. 

The Republicans in the House were put on their mettle 
in this contest, for they had but little aid this time from 
the Democratic side. Mr. Randall's little band of Pro- 
tectionist Democrats were now less than a dozen, and the 
great Democratic Commoner and party leader was absent 
from the House much of the time on account of ill health, 
for the shadow of death had begun its near approach. 

All of the manufacturing industries of Mr. Phelps's 
district would be injuriously affected by the pending bill 
and to several of them its passage would mean utter ruin. 
He fought the bill with the greatest energy. The Demo- 
crats had voted down with stolid solidity every amend- 
ment not approved by their caucus. This aroused Mr. 
Phelps's indignation and called forth his first speech, in 
which he began by saying: 

I do not know, Mr. Chairman, that it is worth while to say 
anything. I cannot help thinking that whatever the fact and 
whatever the argument, it will be of no avail, and I cannot 
help feeling that I speak to a court that has already made its 
decision. How can I feel otherwise when I recall the facts? 
The Committee on Ways and Means refused to let any laborer 
or manufacturer tell them about the facts, refused to let any 
Representative make to them any argument, and then withdrew 
into the dark, privately, to prepare the Mills Bill, a code of 
decisions, which, like the laws of the Medes and the Persians, 
altereth not. This was the first step in their great drama, 
which, if it is successfully carried to the end, will be a tragedy 
to the interests of American industries. 

He then proceeded to show the fallacies and danger of 
the measure under discussion, which, if adopted, would 
throw thousands of his wage-working constituents out of 



His Life and Public Services 185 

employment. He was thoroughly familiar with all the 
points at issue, and his incisive remarks would at times 
bring a half-dozen of his opponents to their feet at once 
with interruptions and protests, and his sharp and tell- 
ing retorts elicited loud applause from the Republican 
benches. The outbursts of Republican applause increased 
the anger of Mr. Mills and his followers, and a systematic 
attempt was made to stop Mr. Phelps in the middle of 
his argument, but without heeding the opposition storm, 
he made the most pungent speech of the debate. 

The "Mills Rill " never became a law. 

A bill was before the House to arrange a conference 
for the purpose of promoting arbitration and encouraging 
reciprocal commercial relations between this country, 
Mexico, and the South American countries, a policy that 
had been originated by Mr. Blaine, during the brief ad- 
ministration of Mr. Garfield. This measure Mr. Phelps 
advocated as vigorously at this session as he did a like 
bill in the previous Congress. 

Petitions, numerously signed, had been presented to 
Congress for the issue of a few millions of dollars in paper 
currency to represent fractional parts of a dollar and a bill 
was brought before the House providing for such an issue. 
Mr. Phelps approved of this measure, and in his argument 
in its favor, he contended that working men and farmers, 
and all those living not conveniently to money-order 
of^ces, were in absolute need of such a currency which 
they could use in the mails when they wanted to buy any 
article worth less than a dollar. The bill providing for 
such a fractional currency, which would be a public con- 
venience even to this day, was adopted in the House by 
a large majority, but failed in the Senate. 

The "Fisheries Retaliation Bill," designed to protect 
our fisheries, especially on the Canada coast, which failed 
of passage in the preceding Congress, came up again and 
Mr. Phelps never appeared to better advantage in any 
debate. At times this one was ver>' acrimonious. No 



1 86 William Walter Phelps 

speech he ever made received more laudation than his 
opening remarks on this measure, in which he denounced 
in scathing language the vacillating and reprehensible 
policy of the Administration in not enforcing the laws 
and treaties already in existence. He showed the whip- 
saw game of the Administration in this whole affair^ 
pointing out how Secretary Bayard made a decision in 
one direction and the President in the opposite, so that 
two political points could be made on the same subject. 
His comments on the refusal of the President for eighteen 
months to apply the retaliatory law while hundreds of 
American fishing vessels were being boarded by Canadian 
officers, held up, and our fishermen thrown into prisons 
without even an explanation from the Canadian Govern- 
ment or a demand for one on the part of our Government, 
cut like a razor, and made the Democrats wince, while 
the Republicans applauded vigorously. 
A report in the Baltimore American said: 

Mr. Phelps's speech was grandly eloquent, and when he 
assured his hearers that the Republicans were willing, aye, 
eager, to give the President all the power he wanted to enforce 
the retaliatory act, and that the country would back him even 
in war, if necessary, to retain the self-respect of the American 
Government and its ])eople there were storms of applause 
from the galleries. Mr. Phelps not only demonstrated his 
oratorical powers, but he displayed statesmanship of the highest 
order. Perry Belmont, who is Chairman of the Committee on 
f'oreign Affairs, attemjited to ask questions and assume fa- 
miliarity with the subject under discussion, but he made a 
botch of the whole thing. 

For some time before Mr. Phelps began talking and during 
the speech Postmaster-General Dickinson, who is credited with 
having written the jingo message on the retaliation act, sat be- 
side Mr. Belmont and coached him continually. Evidently 
Mr. Dickinson went to the House for that purpose. He sat 
within arm's length of Mr. Belmont while the latter was de- 
livering his alleged reply to Mr. Phelps, and he attempted to 



His Life and Public Services 187 

put words into the mouth of the Chairman of the Committee on 
Foreign Affairs. Dickinson's action in coming on the floor of 
the House to coach a member who was defending the Adminis- 
tration of which he was a Cabinet member, was unprecedented 
in this country. 

A prominent Democratic newspaper, which was never 
very friendly to the New Jersey Congressman, portrayed 
the incident in this way : 

The debate on the retaliation bill in the House was more 
interesting to-day. The speeches were better and the oratory 
was more animated. William Walter Phelps spoke first. He 
is a very smooth talker; his sentences are like parts of a fin- 
ished oration, and what he says is not effeminate if his manner 
is. Indeed, the contrast between his manner and his speech 
seemed almost a paradox. His bang was brushed down more 
smoothly than usual over his forehead, and reached from his 
eye-brows to the crown of his head. This is a long distance 
on Mr. Phelps's head, and when you get to the crown you find 
a very pretty, shiny little bald spot. In the vigor of his speech 
the bald spot flashed into sight every now and then like a flash- 
light on a dark coast. Mr. Phelps wore a gray sack suit, whose 
waistcoat buttoned so high in the neck that it only allowed to 
show, about three square inches of a very bright crimson scarf. 
The coat was opened, and one of Mr. Phelps's favorite atti- 
tudes during his speech was to stand with his thumbs in his 
waistcoat pockets and make gestures with the muscles of his 
face. In this feat he was very successful, and in what he said 
the New Jersey Congressman was no chicken. He handled 
the President's special message with keener sarcasm than was 
used the day the sensational document was read in the Senate. 
He spared neither the President nor Mr. Belmont. Indeed, 
he worried the latter as a terrier worries a rat. He was down- 
right mean toward the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Com- 
mittee when the latter ventured to interrupt him with a 
question. Mr. Phelps purposely misunderstood the question 
and put a wrong interpretation on it. Mr. Belmont tried to 
explain, but Mr. Phelps would not let him. Mr. Belmont 



i88 William Walter Phelps 

flushed and raised his voice. Mr. Phelps continued to mis- 
construe the question. Both the gentlemen were talking at 
the same time — Phelps cool and heartless, and Belmont pro- 
voked, embarrassed, and unable to get in a word of explana- 
tion. Mr. Phelps would not yield, and Mr. Belmont was 
forced to sit down and wait until his own time came for 
speaking. 

But Mr. Phelps was not always in cruel antagonism to 
his political opponent, Mr. Belmont, who, as the head of 
the Committee on Foreign Affairs, was occupying a chair 
somewhat too large for him. The latter had on one oc- 
casion reported from his committee a resolution appro- 
priating $50,000 for an American exhibit at a forthcoming 
centenary exposition at Melbourne, New South Wales. 
This appropriation was spitefully opposed by that class of 
members who have a disposition to give the British lion's 
tail an uncomfortable twist whenever an opportunity oc- 
curs. How Mr. Phelps went to the aid of his Demo- 
cratic colleague was told in a dispatch to the Boston 
Herald : 

Mr. Grain had yesterday read a description of Australia and 
that part of the world from an old copy of Colton's Atlas, and 
poked fun at that far-off heathen and benighted country. 

To-day Wm. Walter Phelps proceeded to give the present, 
the real and amazing, figures of wealth, population, and pro- 
gress in those countries, and his speech put a very different 
face upon the matter. 

Of course, Perry Belmont, as Chairman of the important 
Committee on Foreign Affairs, was the manager of the bill, 
but he was utterly helpless. 

It is most pitiful sometimes to witness Mr. Belmont's weak- 
ness and embarrassment when any bill from his committee 
comes before the House. He stammers and breaks down and 
looks the picture of hopelessness. To-day Mr. Phelps came 
over from the Republican side and took a seat beside Mr. 
Belmont, coached him, and made the speech presenting and 
defending. It was a (pieer comment on the intellectual aspect 



His Life and Public Services 189 

of the Democratic side of the House when the Chairman of 
one of its most important committees is obliged to send for a 
Republican to do what is expected of a Chairman. It was a 
complete and untiualified acknowledgment of helplessness and 
incapacity. 

Mr. Phelps's speech in support of the bill appropriating 
$50,000 was characteristic of the man. He never speaks ex- 
cept when he has something to say, and never speaks for effect, 
except effect upon the vote of the House, and does not ai)pear 
to care for or observe the existence of the galleries. When he 
has something to say which he thinks is of moment and ought 
to be said, he rises and says it in terse, pure, and vigorous Eng- 
lish, and stops as soon as he has said it. His arguments and 
oratory carried the day and the resolution went triumphantly 
through. 

The State of New Jersey presented to the National 
Government two statues of distinguished Jerseymen. 
One was a marble statue of Richard Stockton, a famous 
statesman of the Revolutionary era and a Signer of the 
Declaration of Independence; the other was a bronze 
figure of General Philip Kearny, the most dashing and 
heroic soldier who ever went to the battlefield from that 
State. Both names were honorably identified with the 
history of New Jersey and with the United States. Con- 
gress passed a joint resolution accepting the statues and 
assigning them to positions in Statuary Hall, in the 
Capitol — the old hall of the House of Representatives, 
set aside by Congress for the statues of citizens of exalted 
fame. 

August 21, 1888, was designated for the ceremonies and 
both Houses adjourned to attend, while many citizens of 
New Jersey were among the throng of spectators. Mr. 
Phelps was chosen to make the presentation address. 
The occasion did not call for argumentation, but oratory, 
and in no address that the speaker ever made was there 
displayed a more pure and classic eloquence. He sketched 
briefly the lives of the two celebrated men, so widely 



iQO William Walter Phelps 

different, and drew a charming comparison between the 
genius of the calm and reasoning statesman and the daring 
and fearless warrior. In conclusion he said of Kearny : 

He cared nothing for details; he ignored them all, that he 
might concentrate all his energies upon the great principle 
for which he strove. Toward that object he rolled in molten 
stream his past, his present, his future, his memories and 
hopes, his courage and his parts, all that there was in hira. 
Such enthusiasm could not wait for the slow processes of rea- 
son. He appealed often to instinct, knowing that he was a 
child of genius and that genius is kind to her children. The 
appeal was often not in vain, and then Indian and Mexican 
and Algerine and Italian and Confederate looked upon him in 
his rapid strategy and magnificent charge as an inspired mad- 
man; and yet, when unwilling to trust to these dangerous gifts, 
he appealed to the ordinary processes of mankind. He would 
show the power to plan and organize, which is the basis of the 
most solid military character. His intensity of nature, how- 
ever, generally controlled him, and brought with it all its 
natural advantages and disadvantages. He could see only 
the object at which he aimed, and in pursuit of that object he 
would ride roughshod over everything in his way, not from in- 
difference, not from unkindness, but his look was focussed on 
the distant object, and could not be changed. Had this fierce 
enthusiasm, this concentration of fiery genius, been for an un- 
worthy object, it would have been inexcusable and baneful. 
Fortunately, it was almost always directed to a noble and un- 
selfish end, and those over whom he rode healed their wounds 
and forgave him, knowing that he was riding desperately at a 
common enemy. Brave as a lion, tender as a woman, his 
portrait remains the beau ideal of a soldier, and the picture of 
that slim, handsome figure riding alone to its death at Chan- 
tilly, with his bridle in his teeth and his only remaining arm 
waving his sword, goes down to history as symbolic of the 
character and conduct of this gallant leader, the Murat of our 
volunteer army. 

The statues were unveiled after the speaking was over, 



His Life and Public Services 19^ 

Mr. Richard Stockton taking the white drapery from the 
statue of his great-grandfather, and Mr. J. Watts Kearny 
drawing the flag from the bronze figure of his father, 
General Kearny. 

When this unusually long session of Congress termi- 
nated, the record showed that Mr. Phelps had partici- 
pated influentially in all the work of the House, and that 
many bills for useful purposes that had not attracted na- 
tional attention had been made laws largely through his 
efforts, and he was justified in viewing with gratification 
and pride the public duties he had faithfully performed 
throughout a laborious session. 

He found it, however, impossible to conscientiously do 
all that some of his constituents asked of him. A power- 
ful labor organization asked him to vote for a bill to 
establish a system of telegraphy to be controlled by the 
government of the United States. He replied in a letter 
defining his reasons for declining to support such a pro- 
ject. He declared it to be one of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of democratic government in this country, and had 
always been, that nothing should be done for the people 
that the people could do for themselves, and in that doc- 
trine he believed. He held that our people are capable 
of managing their own business enterprises. What they 
really need is encouragement to depend upon govern- 
ment powers less and upon themselves more. Govern- 
mental control of telegraph is one of the methods of 
"paternal government" practised in Europe. We do 
not want to borrow these methods. Among other ob- 
jections, there is the one that they necessitate con- 
stant espionage and interference with the affairs of the 
people. All such meddling, our ideas, natural and 
acquired, would promptly resent. The control of the 
telegraph would be only the first step. The next would 
be to make the government seize and operate express 
and railroad companies, and all other corporate enterprise 
of extensive service, and give it power to appoint a vast 



192 William Walter Phelps 

army of public officials, and thus foster all the demorali- 
zation of perpetual office-seeking by the people. 

Before leaving Washington there came to him an op- 
portunity to do a generous act, not only for the Govern- 
ment, but for the whole people of a Texas town. He 
had the controlling ownership in a large tract of land 
in the Panhandle of the Lone Star State. The United 
States Government had come into possession of several 
sections of this land, on part of which was built a fort, 
and the Government sold what it did not need to settlers. 
As a consequence, the town of Mobeltie, a county seat, 
grew up around this fort. The Government had made 
its own survey, but it was subsequently discovered that 
a blunder had been made in this survey and that the fort 
was located on the land controlled by Mr. Phelps, and 
that the latter was practically the owner of the fort, 
court-house, jail, cemetery, and the homes of several hun- 
dred inhabitants. The settlers were alarmed for fear that 
they might be evicted from their homes, but Mr. Phelps 
quieted them at once by making an offer to the Govern- 
ment, which was accepted, to exchange for the fort and 
village site, an equal number of sections of unimproved 
land, relinquishing all claim to the improvements made 
by the settlers. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Destruction of Beautiful Teaneck Grange by Fire — Bears the Severe Loss 
with Calmness — The Picturesque Ruins to Remain Untouched — 
Stables and Out-Buildings Consumed Five Months Later — Family 
Move to a New Home 

IT seems to have been well understood that on New 
Year's Day, 1888, Congressman Phelps would, as 
usual, be at home to all callers from Bergen County and 
other counties of his district, and in fact, to all his friends 
from everywhere. Hundreds came — those on every step 
of the social scale — Bergen County farmers, men from 
New Jersey and New York whose names were familiar in 
politics, business, and literature. There was something 
of a repetition of the social function that marked the 
completion of the new home the year before. Mrs. 
Phelps being too ill to be present. Miss Phelps did the 
honors of this reception, giving all the visitors a truly 
hearty welcome. One of the guests, inspired by the un- 
usual experience, manifested his pleasure in these lines, 
which were printed in a local newspaper: 

Soft and glimmering the rays of the orb of the day, 
Flickered thro' the heated halls of Teaneck Grange, 
Kissing here and there a spot in Nature's nest, 
For beauty, love, and honor. 

Without ostentation, the touch of cultured hands, 
The choice of trained and gifted eyes 
Hath multiplied the favors that unfold themselves to view: 
Beauty in bric-a-brac, rich and rare, 

193 



194 William Walter Phelps 

Love in colors and art, blending with thouglits that study 

And travel alone could weld into one. 

Grand gift divine — a home. 

And yet fit for a king, for house of royal line, 

Its portals open wide this day to sons of Bergen, 

The yule log burned and threw back 

The challenge to rays of sun — for hospitality. 

The warm grasp, the kind words, the hearty welcome, 

Were cheer enough from genial host 

Held high in the esteem of a favored people. 

May the New Year bring him his heart's desire; 

May it bless indeed his own; 

May his cup o'erflow with health and honor; 

And may the Grange ever stand 

A fit setting for Bergen's noblest son. 

L. FOSDICK. 

It was no doubt far from the thoughts of any present 
on this occasion that it would be the last of the happy 
gatherings of the kind that would ever take place in that 
great and quaintly constructed house, with its priceless 
collection of art treasures from the ends of the earth, to 
feast the sense of the beautiful and curious. 

It was nearly midnight on the ist day of April, 1888, 
that Mr. Phelps, when returning to his apartments in 
Washington after an evening spent with friends, found 
on the table in his bedroom two telegrams which told him 
that at an early hour that evening his home at Teaneck, 
where his family then was, had been totally destroyed by 
fire, with a loss of very nearly all of its valuable con- 
tents. He disturbed no one on receiving this startling 
news, but very early in the morning quietly awakened his 
secretary, told him what had happened, stating that he 
was going to take an immediate train for New York. He 
asked the secretary to accompany him to the station, 
which would save his time in talking over some matters 
and giving him instructions. He left on the train with- 
out once alluding to the great calamity which no doubt 



His Life and Public Sendees 195 

was making him sore at heart, but it was a fine test of his 
philosophy to never lament over misfortunes which can- 
not be averted. 

The fire which destroyed the Teaneck mansion was 
caused by an explosion of gas which had in some unac- 
countable manner filled the art gallery, and it has been 
supposed that some one unconsciously turned on the gas 
in the pipe that supplied the seventy-five jets in the 
gallery. It was Sunday evening and the attention of the 
Superintendent of the Grange was called to the odor of 
escaping gas by the inmates of the house. He traced the 
origin of the leak to the art gallery, and when he opened 
an outlet in the gallery the escaping gas came in contact 
with a lighted jet in the hallway which caused a terrific 
explosion, prostrating the Superintendent and filling the 
whole gallery with flames. All effort to stay the fire was 
unsuccessful and the flames in a short time spread along 
every thoroughfare of the house, and very soon all efforts 
to save the building had to be abandoned, for the facili- 
ties for checking a considerable conflagration were neither 
at hand on the premises, nor could they be procured from 
the neighboring towns of Hackensack and Englewood in 
time to be of practical benefit. In this dilemma the only 
course of action was that of saving as much as possible of 
the contents of the house. The report of the explosion 
and the blaze that soon illuminated the surrounding 
country drew many people from a considerable distance, 
the earlier arrivals being of service in the work of salvage. 

The gallery was so quickly a mass of flames that it was 
impossible to save many of the pictures, only three or 
four being taken out. Aided by the willing hands of 
neighbors, some of the furniture, art works, books, etc., 
were saved from the other apartments, as the fire did not 
spread so rapidly from room to room, owing to the solid 
walls. Mrs. Phelps and Miss Phelps, while their hearts 
were filled with grief at the calamity which had so sud- 
denly befallen them, did not become prostrated or stand 



196 William Walter Phelps 

idly by, but shared with others in the work at hand and 
with the utmost coolness gave directions to those who 
came to their aid in saving from destruction the articles 
of the most value. 

When the fire first started, messengers were dispatched 
to Englcwood and Hackensack for assistance, but the con- 
dition of the roads was such that the building was con- 
sumed when the firemen arrived. They rendered valuable 
service in removing and protecting the saved property. 

Thus, within about an hour, this beautiful home, with 
its associations of love, friendship, hopes, ambitions, and 
achievements, was a smouldering ruin, only bare walls 
and four tall chimneys marking the spot so lately orna- 
mented by tower, gables, minarets, dormers, and slanting 
roofs. 

The single piece of wood in the structure unconsumed 
was a bit of timber forming part of a small porch at the 
south end of the art gallery. Now it still protrudes from 
the wall immediately over the iron door — a door, by the 
way, that is credited by some with responsibility for the 
destruction of the residence. It could not be opened 
from the outside and therefore impeded efforts in the im- 
portant first moments. At the north of the residence, 
and within a few feet of it, the wooden cover over a well 
escaped the fire and still stands. 

The "Phelps Ruin " at once became a great curiosity, 
not only to the neighboring communities, but throughout 
a wide extent of country. Driving, bicycling, and walk- 
ing parties visit it daily in pleasant season to admire the 
picturesque beauty of its vine-covered walls standing in 
irregular and massive outline, while the tall chimneys 
stand like green crowned sentinels over the scene. At 
this period tall trees, grown from seed dropped by pass- 
ing birds, rear their heads above the highest walls. An 
especially attractive example of this is a white birch in 
the very centre of the art gallery, its symmetrical and 
delicate outlines suggestive of the glory whicli the room 



His Life and Public Services 197 

presented before its destruction. Those who were familiar 
with the house in its completeness now gaze along the 
irregular rows of crumbling stones, moss- and vine-covered 
by Time's unrelenting hand, and picture it as it was: 
Here adjoining the parlor and music-room were the apart- 
ments of the mistress of the manse; along this eastern 
wall, bordered in its outer length and turnings by a 
piazza, ran the corridor from entrance hall to dining-room, 
along which the guest paused at intervals to inspect gems 
of art from many lands; at this spot in the hall was the 
Garfield portrait; there hung the pastel of the Bernhardt 
in a subdued light that gave striking effect to her dramatic 
pose; a curiously wrought box of aromatic wood stood 
near, its fragrance penetrating the entire house when a 
humid atmosphere prevailed — it was a memento of Capt. 
John J. Phelps's trip around the world and was procured 
in the Far East. Up there, in the second story of the 
original farmhouse, was the large private room of Miss 
Phelps — an apartment wholly original in finishing and 
furnishings, with whitewood desk built into the old 
dormer window, with broad couch, grill-work screen, 
with a decorative scheme unique, original, rich in quaint 
sketches, etchings, carvings, and bric-a-brac from pen, 
pencil, and brush of intimate friends. This was above 
the hallway and drawing-room where friendship and hos- 
pitality felt their warmest glow, and political policies of 
far more that local import were discussed and given their 
place in the schedule of events. Over to the left is all 
that is left of the master's "den" — the spot where he 
worked out the many problems of private business and 
public service which engaged his active and fertile mind. 
That rusty remnant of an iron box was the safe which 
contained his personal papers — some of them secrets of 
state and party purposes. Memory becomes instantly 
alert in gazing upon the spot to-day — rehabilitating the 
building in its former glory, filling it with the fulness of 
social graces of hospitality and philanthropy. 



198 William Walter Phelps 

Mr. Phelps reached Teaneck as soon as he could cret 
there the day after the fire, and there he found Mrs. 
Phelps and his daughter, with the Superintendent, wait- 
ing for him and looking sadly upon the ruins. He was 
deeply moved while he looked upon the work of the de- 
stroyer, but soon calmly mastered the situation, and the 
next morning he leased for the occupancy of his family 
what was known as the "Griggs House," a pretentious 
structure, located upon a plot of twenty acres of ground 
adjoining the Teaneck estate. This property was shortly 
afterwards purchased, the grounds handsomely laid out 
and improved, and the house reconstructed into the large 
and attractive country residence which has since been the 
Phelps home at Teaneck. Two days later the Congress- 
man was back in Washington occupying his seat in the 
House and busy with the affairs of the nation. 

The thoughtfulness and appreciation of Mr. Phelps 
for any service or kindness is indicated in the appended 
note, which was printed in a local newspaper: 

A CARD OF THANKS 

Editor Times . — I shall have to ask the courtesy of your 
columns, after all, to thank my friends and neighbors for their 
kind services at the fire which destroyed Teaneck Grange. I 
have sought to avoid the necessity of the formal and usual 
public acknowledgment. I was reluctant to bring my private 
loss again to the public eye, and besides, the services rendered 
were so prompt and zealous, that I wanted to thank each one 
who rendered them, personally. But I find the brief period 
of my home visits allowed by Congressional duties makes it 
impossible for me to meet them all, so I am compelled in this 
way to express to those whom I have not yet met, mv deep 
gratitude. Especially I want to thank the Fire Companies of 
Hackensack and Englewood. The united efforts of all have 
saved for me some memorials of my old home. As these 
memorials are seen within new walls, they will serve to remind 
me that the friendship of Bergen County, which for nearly a 



His Life and Public Services 199 

quarter of a century never failed me in prosperity, was found 

as warm and as helpful when misfortune came. 

Yours very truly, 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 
Teaneck, April 30, 1888. 

It was in the night of August "14, 1888, nearly five 
months after the burning of the mansion, that the ex- 
tensive stables and all adjoining out-buildings and coach- 
men's quarters were destroyed by fire, thus completely 
wiping out every structure connected with the private 
residence and appointments of Teaneck Grange. The 
origin of the fire was unknown, and it was so rapid in its 
spreading that little could be accomplished in the work 
of saving the contents, excepting the horses, which were 
all rescued. Nearly all the carriages, harness, and other 
equipments of the large buildings, with a considerable 
quantity of goods stored after the destruction of the resi- 
dence, were lost in the consuming flames. 

At this date Mr. Phelps was in the southern part of 
New Jersey, busy with campaign work, and did not hear 
of this fire until the evening of the next day, when he 
arrived at Asbury Park, where he was to address an im- 
mense mass meeting under the auspices of all the New 
Jersey Republican clubs. When informed of the catas- 
trophe, he merely remarked: "Well, the fire fiend seems 
to be pursuing me," and then went on the platform and 
made the most logical and effective political speech of his 
life, to an audience the largest he ever addressed. 



CHAPTER XX 

Declines to Continue in Congress — New Jersey Republicans Resolve to 
Name Him for the Presidency in the National Convention of 1888 
— He Refuses to Have His Name Presented — Consents to Be- 
come a Candidate for the Vice-Presidential Nomination — Receives a 
Gratifying Support in the Convention, but the Claims of the Empire 
State are Paramount and a Combination Nominates Levi P. Morton 
— Active in the Presidential Campaign — Takes I'art in Nomination 
of President Harrison — The Phelps Guards of Paterson, and Their 
Warm Reception in Washington — Mr. Blaine His Guest when Ap- 
pointed Secretary of State 

AFTER accepting the nomination for Congress in 1886, 
'Sir. Phelps gave out distinctly that he would not 
again be a candidate for a scat in the national House of 
Representatives. At the end of that term he would have 
served eight years in the House, and he thought that was 
all that his party, or the voters of his district, could rea- 
sonably call upon him to do in the line of Congressional 
service. As the time for another election approached, 
all the political signs pointed to a Republican majority 
in the next House. In that case, it was certain that if 
Mr. Phelps were a member he would be placed at the 
head of one of the most important committees, and the 
probability was that he would be made the Chairman of 
the Committee on Ways and Means, which carries with 
it the leadership of the majority. He felt that he lacked 
the physical strength to undergo the strain and respon- 
sibilities which must always devolve upon a foremost 
member of a majority party in the House, lie therefore 
thought himself justified in resisting all importunities to 

200 



His Life and Public Services 201 

accept another nomination for the seat he had so long 
occupied. His party was finally convinced that in all 
fairness it should respect his wishes, and thus he took the 
initial step for his voluntary retirement from Congress at 
a time when there existed no evidence of satiety on the 
part of the people. 

It was known to Mr. Phelps long before 1888 that 
there was no possibility of Mr. Blaine allowing his name 
to go before the Republican National Convention of that 
year, but the New Jersey leader intended to do his best 
in rallying all the "thick and thin" Blaine men in the 
party to an earnest support of whoever might be the 
party nominee. 

One of the advance movements of the campaign of 1888 
was a notable banquet given in Baltimore, in January, by 
the Central Republican Club of that city. It was at- 
tended by leading Senators and statesmen from Washing- 
ton, and several Governors of States. Senators Evarts, 
Hawley, and Chandler were of the speakers, but Con- 
gressman Phelps made the rousing speech of the evening, 
marking out what must be the issues of the approaching 
campaign, and encouraging the Republicans to deserve 
and expect victory in the presidential contest. It was 
one of the best displays of the speaker's inspiriting ora- 
tory, and being widely quoted in the newspapers pro- 
duced a visible public effect. 

Ever since the election of 1886, it had been constantly 
suggested in Republican councils that Mr. Phelps would 
make a most available candidate for the Vice-Presidency 
on the next Republican ticket. His fine national record, 
his acknowledged ability and familiarity with government 
affairs, all qualified him for a vice-presidential nominee. 
It was urged that his family relations to Connecticut, his 
business connections and acquaintance in New York, and 
his citizenship and personal popularity in New Jersey, 
would contribute largely to the chances of the Republi- 
cans carrying those usually doubtful States. As the time 



202 William Walter Phelps 

for the convention drew near, his was the leading name 
for the Vice-Presidency canvassed by thousands of Re- 
publican journals from one end of the Union to the other. 
It was also a strongly expressed opinion in many jour- 
nals that his name would be an excellent one for the first 
place on the national ticket, in the event that a choice 
could not easily be made from the unusual number of 
prominent Republicans whose names were foreshadowed 
to be presented to the convention. Mr. Phelps gave 
little thought to this suggestion, but the Republicans of 
New Jersey regarded the prompting as worthy of con- 
sideration, and in their State convention which met 
to choose presidential delegates, the following resolution 
was read : 

Resolved, That the Republicans of New Jersey are proud to 
call the attention of the National Convention to the name of 
one who is eminently fitted to lead the party in the next cam- 
paign. With an honorable record in foreign diplomacy; with 
a long experience as one of the leaders in the National Con- 
gress; wise in council and prompt in action; a publicist and 
yet a man of affairs whose extensive business relations acquaint 
him with the wants of the people; an early and persistent and 
recognized champion of the rights of labor; with a name in all 
the States as a synonym of honesty and capacity; we pledge 
to him the electoral vote of New Jersey, and, believing him to 
be the strongest candidate in the doubtful States, present the 
name of William Walter Phelps. 

The rules were suspended and the resolution passed 
unanimously and with vociferous cheering for New Jer- 
sey's choice. 

All kinds of tickets were made up by the newspapers, 
which combined the name of Mr. Phelps with that of all 
the leading statesmen who were aspiring to the first posi- 
tion. A ticket comprising the name of Robert T. Lincoln 
and William Walter Phelps was largely mentioned and 
aroused much enthusiasm among the young men of the 



His Life and Public Services 203 

party, but before the convention, Mr. Lincoln's name was 
withdrawn from the list of candidates and Illinois gave its 
support to Judge Gresham of Chicago. 

On the first ballot in the convention, the leading can- 
didates stood in this order: Sherman, Gresham, Depew, 
Alger, Harrison, Allison. 

Mr. Phelps refused to have his name presented to the 
convention for the Presidency. Nevertheless, he received 
twenty-five votes, including those of his own State. Had 
he not discountenanced the formal introduction of his 
name, doubtless his vote would have been much larger, 
for he had warm friends in a number of the State delega- 
tions who would gladly have given him their support had 
he been announced as a candidate. 

There was a phenomenally long contest in this con- 
vention; the balloting continued for five days, during 
which the supporters of each of the foremost candidates 
adhered loyally to their favorite. But the time came 
when some sort of a compromise became a necessity, and 
after much manoeuvring. New York was induced to lead 
off in such a movement by withdrawing from the field Mr. 
Depew. Following this, but after some delay, Iowa 
dropped Mr. Allison's name, and then came the combina- 
tion of the large States of New York and Pennsylvania, 
Indiana and Iowa, which terminated the struggle in favor 
of Mr. Harrison, with an understanding that there should 
be yielded New York its candidate for the Vice-Presidency, 
Mr. Morton. 

This result put at an end any probability of Mr. Phelps 
for the second place, but his adherents were by no means 
content with the "arrangement " for the vice-presidential 
candidate, in which they had no part. They believed that 
while Mr. Morton would be strong in one doubtful State, 
Mr. Phelps would be strong in all, and they decided that 
the name of their favorite should be placed before the 
nominating body. He was therefore named in behalf of 
New Jersey by Hon. John W. Griggs in a bright speech 



204 William Walter Phelps 

which arrested much attention, and the unanimous criti- 
cism of the speaker was: "That young man will be apt to 
be heard from hereafter." Mr. Griggs's nomination of 
Mr. Phelps was seconded in able remarks by General 
Gibson of Ohio, Congressman J. P. Dolliver of Iowa, Con- 
gressman Boutelle of Maine, Judge Rosenthal of Texas, 
Mr. Eagan of Nebraska, Mr. Fuller of North Carolina, and 
Mr. Sims of Virginia. It follows that Mr. Morton, with 
all his advantages, was successful, the vote received by 
Mr. Phelps being 119. While the New Jersey Congress- 
man was acceptable to all the candidates in the field as a 
running mate, he was the decided preference of those 
who at the start had the highest votes — Mr. Sherman and 
Mr. Gresham. 

Mr. Phelps took a cheerful view of the result and was 
quickly back at his desk in Washington, striving to finish 
up his official labors so as to take a lively part in the presi- 
dential campaign as soon as it should fairly open. In a 
published interview he said : 

When New York united all its factions and strength and 
asked for the nomination of Mr. Morton, the Convention did 
well not to refuse the request of the Empire State. 

The office of Mr. Phelps in New York was a thronged 
and busy political centre throughout the fall of 1888. 
The callers were so numerous from all sections of New 
Jersey and elsewhere that it was impossible for him to 
give them all interviews, and part of that work had to be 
done by his political secretary. Mrs. Phelps and Miss 
Phelps were in Europe, and the Congressman gave his 
whole time to the presidential canvass. He was on the 
platform almost dail\-, it being his custom to remain in 
his office in the forenoon and each afternoon go to some 
point in New Jersey where he had an appointment for an 
evening speech, so that before Election day was reached 
he had addressed great mass meetings in every important 



His Life and Public Services 205 

point in the State, and in addition he gave some time to 
platform speaking at large places in other States. 

After the election, and at the beginning of December, 
he went to the opening of the short session of the House 
which would last only until the 4th of March following, 
when his Congressional career would finally close. 

The Democrats had lost the Presidency and the next 
House and were in no mood to enact any more legislation 
of any moment, therefore but little save the routine work 
was performed during this brief three months' life of the 
House. 

The Republicans had failed to secure a majority on 
joint ballot in the New Jersey Legislature, and at the 
election for United States Senator in January, a Demo- 
crat was chosen. Republican members of the Legislature 
wished to compliment their leading Congressman with 
their votes in the caucus, but he was disinclined to a fruit- 
less nomination and that honor was bestowed elsewhere. 

Mr. Phelps was one of the Committee of Arrangements 
appointed by the House to conduct the ceremonies of 
Mr. Harrison's inauguration, and this was his last official 
duty as a Representative in Congress. 

The inauguration was attended in a body by the 
"Phelps Guards" of Paterson, two hundred strong. 
This organization was formed in 1872, when its namesake 
was for the first time nominated for Congress, and it fol- 
lowed his fortunes all through his political career. Its 
members were the most prominent and respectable young 
Republicans of Paterson, and from that class year after 
year its recruits came, and it was always an acknowledged 
power in all the political campaigns of the memorable 
Fifth District. The New Jersey statesman welcomed the 
"Old Guard" to the National Capitol with his accustomed 
cordiality, and all in his power was done to make their 
stay interesting and pleasant. Before leaving for their 
homes on the day following the inauguration, the Guards 
serenaded Mr. Phelps at his hotel. While standing on 



2o6 William Walter Phelps 

the balcony with Mrs. Blaine and Miss Phelps behind 
him, he made a brief and encouraging address to the 
visitors drawn up in line before him, telling them that 
they could go to their homes with the utmost confidence 
that the new Administration would serve the country 
faithfully, intelligently, and patriotically. He then ac- 
companied the Guards to the White House, where, at his 
invitation, the new President came on the piazza and re- 
viewed the fine body of New Jersey's Republicans as 
they marched in front of him. This was Mr. Phelps's 
last meeting with an organization of zealous friends and 
followers who had for so many years borne his name with 
honor and pride. 

Mr. Blaine went to Washington in January, 1889, and 
was for a time the guest of Mr, Phelps. It was apparent 
to all that he was to be the Secretary of State in the 
Harrison Cabinet, therefore when his appointment to that 
position immediately followed the inauguration, it but 
fulfilled public expectation. 



CHAPTER XXI 

Commissioner to Samoan Conference — His First Meeting with Bismarck — 
Interesting Extract from His Diary — Has English Adopted as 
Language of Conference — Dubbed the " Peacemaker " — Splendid 
Diplomatic Success — Returns with "Peace and Honor" Treaty — 
Warmly Received by the President Who Presents Him with a 
Commission as Minister to Berlin — Declines Receptions 

NEARLY the first important business that made a 
claim upon the new Administration was the naming 
of three commissioners to act in conference with like 
officials from England and Germany in the adjustment of 
the difficulties in which these three countries were in- 
volved concerning affairs in the Samoan Islands. 

For ten years German merchants and German officials 
had been trying to gain advantages in Samoa and fre- 
quently their efforts were not attended by the circum- 
spection and regard for the rights of others which is 
required of enlightened nations when such actions are 
exposed to the criticism of their peers. The Government 
at Berlin had been encouraging and fostering colonization 
and not only failed to call its officials sharply to account 
for their actions in Samoa, but it seems as if it, at least, 
overlooked many of their high-handed transactions. As 
a matter of fact, when these transactions were investi- 
gated, it was found that the German Government had not 
taken any part in their conception or execution, yet its 
failure to check the overzealous officials left the Govern- 
ment in a very lame attitude. 

Internal dissension had been fomenting among the 
natives until these beautiful and once peaceful islands of 

207 



2o8 William Walter Phelps 

the Pacific had been reduced to a state of anarchy and 
harassed by the baleful hand of civil war. In this reduced 
state, the German officials attempted acts which were 
tantamount to annexation, in violation of their treaty, 
and but for the protection of the American consul 
and his courageous interference it is very probable the 
Germans would have accomplished their purpose and the 
German flag would have remained floating over Apia. 

Malietoa, the lawful king, was deeply attached to the 
English-speaking residents. Treaties had been made by 
Samoa with the United States in 1878, with Germany in 
January, 1879, ^^^ ^^'^^^^ England in August, 1879. In 
1884, under pressure, a fresh treaty was made with Ger- 
many, practically handing over the islands to that power, 
which was afterwards disallowed by England and America 
and repudiated by Malietoa himself, as having been ex- 
torted by threats. 

For the next three years the condition of the Samoan 
Islands was one of turmoil and civil war, instigated by 
German officials, who kept an armed force there con- 
tinually. The German policy finally culminated in the 
imprisonment and banishment of Malietoa and the estab- 
lishment by German authority of a rebel chief named 
Tamasese as king. All this time there were vigorous 
protests by the United States against the conduct of 
Germany. There was a constant diplomatic correspond- 
ence, and a conference at Washington, all without any 
practical result. In the meantime, affairs on the islands 
were growing worse and there was a rebellion of the 
natives against the government of Tamasese. 

Secretary of State Bayard seemed to have been unfor- 
tunate in his handling of the Samoan affair. Prince Bis- 
marck grew more irritated and impatient as the troubles 
became protracted and no friendly solution presented 
itself, and the correspondence between Berlin and Wash- 
ington on the subject became strained. Bismarck laid 
all the blame on the American consuls in Samoa, whom 



His Life and Public Services 209 

he charged with continually opposing and thwarting Ger- 
many and encouraging disputes between the natives and 
the German officials. Mr. Bayard replied that the troubles 
in Samoa were owing to German influence in supporting 
Tamasese in his rebellion. There was a strong public 
opinion in the United States at this time that Samoa and 
its king had been unjustly treated by the Germans and 
that the American Government had been to some extent 
outmanoeuvred. Mr. Bayard had asked the assent of 
Lord Salisbury and Prince Bismarck to the publication of 
all the documents and proceedings in the Samoan matter, 
but both the German and English Ministers refused. 

This was the state of the Samoan affairs, accentuated by 
a new outbreak of hostilities among the natives, when the 
Democratic Administration retired and President Harri- 
son was inaugurated on March 4, 1889. Congress had 
provided for the appointment of three commissioners to 
attend a second conference with commissioners from 
England and Germany to be held at Berlin. Mr. Blaine 
at once thought of Mr. Phelps, in whom the American 
statesman had the greatest confidence at all times, and 
especially where a knowledge of diplomacy and acquaint- 
ance with European methods and a natural tact in con- 
troversy were required. 

When Mr. Phelps was informed of his selection, he 
hesitated to accept the commission. He had retired to 
his New Jersey estate and did not expect active service 
for some time. It was well known that he was booked 
for diplomatic service. In the newspapers and in high 
official circles his name was constantly mentioned for 
either the mission to England, France, or Germany. It 
was understood that he had expressed a preference for 
France, while at the same time it was expected that Mr. 
Whitelaw Reid would receive the appointment to Eng- 
land. Circumstances arose which prevented the President 
from appointing Mr. Reid to the Court of St. James, and 
he was offered the French mission, which he accepted. 

'4 



2IO William Walter Phelps 

It was then that Mr. Blaine wrote to Mr. Phelps saying 
that it had been his hope to send Mr. Phelps to France 
and expressing the belief that Mr. Reid would not wish 
to remain a long time at Paris, and if Mr. Phelps should 
so desire it, Mr. Blaine would try to have him named as 
Mr. Reid's successor. In the same letter, the Secretary 
of State, who had been a faithful friend and admirer of 
Mr. Phelps, urged him to accept the temporary appoint- 
ment to the Samoan Conference, saying: 

But no friend, let me add, should make you underrate the 
Samoan appointment. The question referred to your commis- 
sion is far the most important (unless it be the fisheries) we 
have had to settle for many years — the most important that I 
can recall on the Continent for fifty years. I intended to pay 
you a compliment of a very high order when I recommended 
your nomination. You can always rest with the utmost con- 
fidence of my having you at all times on the tablet of my 
memory and of my heart and that nothing I can do shall ever 
be left undone to promote your wishes. 

This reminder of the ardent personal friendship that 
had so long existed between these brilliant men at once 
overcame Mr. Phelps's objections to undertaking the 
public duty thus pointed out to him, and he accepted the 
commission which gave him the opportunity of meeting 
the great Bismarck in diplomacy and winning a victory 
of much advantage to his country and credit to himself. 
His conferees on the commission were John A. Kasson 
of Iowa and George H. Bates of Delaware. These ap- 
pointments were confirmed by the Senate on March i8, 
1889. Mr. Kasson had served as Minister to Austria, as 
had Mr. Phelps. Mr. Bates was a Democrat and a dis- 
tinguished lawyer in Delaware. He had been Mr. Bayard's 
special Commissioner to Samoa, sent out when the Sa- 
moan Conference in Washington broke up. He acquired 
very decided opinions about the conduct of Germany in 
the islands. 



His Life and Public Services 211 

In the Century Magazine for April, Mr, Bates had an 
article which was evidently written before he knew of his 
appointment as a Commissioner to the Berlin Conference, 
and in which he said : 

The course pursued by Germany, the insults to our citizens 
and our flag, and more than all, to our government itself, in 
deceiving us with assurances which were belied by simul- 
taneous inconsistent actions, certainly should forbid further 
efforts in the direction of co-operative action until disclaimers 
are accompanied with fruit meet for repentance. 

This article was taken up and commented upon by all 
the newspapers of the day as incautious and undiplo- 
matic language for a man chosen for a delicate mission, 
and it was suggested that he had better stay at home, but 
no importance was attached to the article in the United 
States or German Governments, and it was soon forgotten. 

The appointment of Mr. Phelps and Mr. Kasson met 
with universal approval, albeit there was considerable 
levity in some newspapers over Mr. Phelps's bang and 
its probable diplomatic effect on the grim German 
Chancellor. 

The Samoan Commissioners, immediately after their 
appointment, sought all the information they could ob- 
tain at the departments in Washington, relating to the 
Samoan controversy. The newspapers, commenting on 
the appointments, mentioned the rumor that after he had 
discharged the duties of Samoan Commissioner, Mr. 
Phelps would be named for Minister to Germany. This 
rumor soon reached Europe, and Mr. Pendleton, who 
was then Minister to Germany, sent a dispatch which was 
shown to Mr. Phelps while he was receiving his instruc- 
tions from the State Department. It said that Bismarck 
had sent up the Emperor's request to know what he could 
learn of William Walter Phelps, who was spoken of as 
Mr. Pendleton's successor. 

The instructions of Secretary Blaine to the Commis- 



212 William Walter Phelps 

sioners emphasized the fact that the conference to be held 
at Berlin was a renewal of the conference at Washington 
in 1887, "for the purpose of establishing peace, and an 
orderly, stable government in the Samoan Islands, on 
the basis of their recognized independence and the equal 
rights of the three treaty powers." Mr. Blaine gave the 
Commissioners all the latitude he could on the subject, 
telling them that the Government of the United States 
desired a speedy and amicable solution of all the ques- 
tions involved, yet he desired them to urge with "tem- 
perate firmness " the restoration of the status quo, which 
meant the independence of the natives and the return of 
Malietoa, and likewise the equality of the three treaty 
powers in commerce and navigation. 

If, Mr. Blaine said, it became absolutely necessary that 
the three treaty powers should administer the government 
of Samoa, it was the earnest desire of the President that 
this intervention should be temporary and avowedly pre- 
paratory to the restoration of as complete independence 
and autonomy as was possible in the islands; that the in- 
tervention of the three treaty powers must be on terms 
of absolute equality, and that the adjustment of claims 
and titles to land should be matters of important con- 
sideration, because the claims of foreigners to land in the 
islands amounted to more than the whole area of the 
group. 

It will thus be seen that Mr. Blaine adopted essentially 
the plan and the attitude of Mr. Bayard at the previous 
conference, and it is a signal proof of the ability of Mr. 
Phelps and his conferees that they won every point in 
Berlin after the failure in Washington. In the develop- 
ment of the Conference, it appeared that the American 
Commissioners had the advantage of being in a more 
logical and secure position than the Germans. 

Mr. Phelps sailed from New York on the 13th of April, 
1889. and arrived in Berlin on the 27th of that month. 
The Commissioners made their headquarters at the Kaiser- 



His Life and Public Services 213 

hof, where a mat^nificent suite of rooms had been engaged 
for them. The Commissioners representing Germany 
were Count Herbert Bismarck, Baron de Holstein, and 
Dr. Krauel. The EngHsh Commissioners were Sir Ed- 
ward Baldwin Malet, at Berlin, the British Ambassador 
Mr. Charles Stewart Scott, English Minister to Switzer- 
land, and Mr. Joseph Archer Crowe. 

Count Herbert Bismarck was head of the German dele- 
gation, and his father, the great iron Chancellor, was in 
closest touch with the developments of the negotiations, 
even to the smallest details, and he dictated the German 
policy. Mr. Phelps became the leading spirit on the 
American side, and he was thus pitted in diplomatic con- 
test with the master mind of the century. Through all 
the arduous and trying work of the Conference he dis- 
played such rare tact and fertility of resource that he won 
the admiration and lasting friendship of Prince Bismarck 
and his son, a friendship that was advantageous to the 
American statesman later in his career, and of great benefit 
to the American people. 

Official calls occupied the time of the American Com- 
missioners during the first few days before they took up 
the work of their mission. Among the first calls was one 
paid to Prince Bismarck in his palace, given him by Em- 
peror William I., at Wilhelm Strasse. Mr. Phelps thus 
records the event in his diary, May, 1889: 

Called at 2 p.m. on Prince Bismarck. In vestibule — an 
open hall, level with the street — met by Count Herbert. In a 
few minutes met at the door of the adjacent room by his 
father. Old, large, feeble, in military coat, carelessly unbut- 
toned. He told of the Emperor's gift, so valuable because he 
could go without any descent directly from his library into the 
garden, which he said was very beautiful, and the only place 
where he could walk now. He could not walk in the street on 
account of his popularity. He needed to keep his hat off all 
the time, or to keep constantly touching it, which was just as 
bad, and two policemen to keep the crowd back, for every one 



214 William Walter Phelps 

seemed to know him. Was not always so popular, and it was 
pleasanter. It was n't necessary to notice frowns and stares 
— and, inside (pointing to his heart) their hate did n't harm. 
He spoke of cause of his popularity and the reverse. After 
the war, 1872 to 1878, was most unpopular. The Conserva- 
tives said he had deserted them — too much water of liberalism 
in his conservatism. If a man wishes most to serve his coun- 
try, he must sacrifice his personal pride, or his own consistency 
— people to manage, parties to manage, monarchs to manage 
— all can give something to the successful government, and the 
wise statesman will secure contributions from all. Germany 
found a monarch necessary; the United States seemed not to. 
He mentioned the opportunity the Commission had of seeing 
one of the military functions when the new colors had been 
given to the first regiment. This caused us to laughingly 
allude to the awkward appearance we must have made in dress 
suits, unattractive in the sunlight, beside so many brilliant 
uniforms. This caused him to remark: "I was wont, when 
younger, to give one hour a day to changing my clothes. 
There was my ordinary dress. Then there was need to change 
to a military suit, followed by a civil dress upon summons from 
the Emperor. Next came a resumption of citizen's dress, after 
which there would be another summons in the afternoon when 
a military dress must be worn. Finally I had to don an even- 
ing dress for a dinner party. But later the PLmperor graciously 
consented that I might wear militar)^ dress always, and so save 
thirty hours per month — five good working days." The 
Chancellor plead sweetly that we would not work Herbert too 
hard in the Conference — he was very proud of his boy. He 
spoke cheerfully of the work of the Commissioners and hoped 
they would speedily settle matters in those unhajipy islands. 
He thought the zeal and self-sufficiency of the consuls were to 
blame for much that occurred, supposed that we knew the 
government was not responsible for all they did. He spoke 
of his Ulm dogs (two of which were by), one given him by the 
Emperor. Said : " Wife was always happy when she got some- 
thing of Bret Harte's to read." He was reading Motley's 
letters. They had roomed together in Gottingen — one talking 
English and the other (ierman. The English of Prince Bis- 



His Life and Public Services 215 

marck was slow and rugged like himself, but his conversation 
always interesting. ^ 

The first session of the Conference was held on the 
29th of April, 1889, and Count Herbert Bismarck was 
chosen president. On the initiative of Mr, Phelps, who, 
with all the American Commissioners, could understand 
and talk French, it was decided to conduct the Conference 
in the English language. This was an innovation in dip- 
lomatic negotiations which was very widely commented 
on at the time and led to much speculation as to the de- 
cadence of French and the adoption of English as the 
future language of diplomacy. 

At this session Count Bismarck announced that the 
German Government had received an official report that 
Malietoa had expressed his regret and his earnest wish to 
be reconciled with the German Government. On receiv- 
ing this report, the Emperor had ordered the release of 
Malietoa, who was now at liberty to return to Samoa if 
he chose. This was an important piece of news to the 
Commissioners as it opened a way by which the status 
quo ante could be regained and thus settle one of the 
fundamental difficulties of the situation. The announce- 
ment was received with gratifica,tion. 

It was agreed upon to keep the transactions of the 
Conference secret for the time being, and that pledge 
was sacredly kept by all the Commissioners, Scraps of 
information began to leak out through other sources later 
on and the newspapers published rumors that the Ameri- 
cans were successful in their mission. It soon became 
known that Mr. Phelps had taken the lead on the Ameri- 
can side, and that it was due to his tactful and diplomatic 
bearing that many concessions were obtained by the 
Americans, especially in the matter of the immunity 
granted to Mataafa in the settlement of the government 
of Apia and of the land question. 

The real work of the Conference was done in sub-corn- 



2i6 William Walter Phelps 

mittee and it was there that Mr. Phelps showed to advan- 
tage. His suavity and grace, combined with a fine logical 
mind and magnetic effectiveness in conversation, gave him 
that subtle power which overcomes and conquers in 
struggles of this kind, lie was the American member of 
the sub-committee to consider the form of the future 
Samoan government and its connection with municipal 
affairs, but he also attended the meetings of the other 
sub-committees and took an active part in their debates. 
While he clung closely and consistently to the original 
policy of the United States Government, he always main- 
tained a friendly attitude and address, winning the 
friendship and admiration of the German and English 
Commissioners, and even of the great Bismarck himself, 
who kept in close touch witli the work of the Conference, 
even to the smallest details. Such was the influence of 
Mr. Phelps upon the progress and development of the 
negotiations that he was soon dubbed the "Peacemaker," 
and in this role he accomplished what had before been 
thought impossible because of the failure at the Confer- 
ence in Washington. Although he was punctilious in 
attending all the social functions that naturally accom- 
panied such a mission, he worked indefatigably during 
the weeks the Conference was pending. Every day he 
was for hours at his desk working out the plans he formed 
and meeting the suggestions made at the sessions of the 
sub-committees. He was also in constant communication 
with Blaine at Washington. 

Early in the negotiations, Mr. Phelps saw that it would 
not be difficult for the American Commissioners to sain 
what they contended for if a way could be devised to 
let the Germans retreat gracefully. The Chancellor had 
apparently seen that his position, or rather the position 
which overzealous officials and avaricious adventurers in 
Samoa had forced upon him, was untenable; but it was 
not to be expected that the imperious Bismarck would 
completely back down and acknowledge that Germany 



His Life and Public Services 217 

had made a flat failure in the Southern Pacific Islands. 
For two years the press and the people of Germany had 
presented a bellicose front on the subject and although 
now the German Government recognized that mistakes 
had been made and was willing to seek a friendly settle- 
ment, yet it would have to come out of the Conference 
claiming something in order to mollify the press and peo- 
ple, and to this phase of the subject Mr. Phelps addressed 
liimself with all the ingenuity at his command. He got 
valuable assistance from the English Commissioners, who 
were willing to act as "honest brokers" between the 
American and German Commissioners. 

One of the first pieces of information to find its way 
into the newspapers was the agreement on the form of 
the municipal government of Apia and this was called 
the "Phelps Compromise." 

After seven plenary sittings, the Conference practi- 
cally finished its work on the 29th of May, but the final 
meeting was not held until June 14th, because the Amer- 
ican Commissioners had to obtain the approval of the 
Department at Washington. This took longer than was 
expected on account of some slight difTerences which 
were ultimately overcome. It was on the 13th of June 
that Mr. Phelps cabled to Mr. Blaine that everything was 
settled and the work of the Conference was done. He 
asked if the Commission should break up, and the re- 
sponse of the Secretary of State was: "Yes, if well and 
successfully done." The treaty was not made public at 
that time, as it had to be ratified by the United States 
Senate, and the usual courtesy to that body dictated 
secrecy. As it was afterwards made public, the treaty 
showed that the United States had won on every material 
point in contention. The first article provides: 

It is declared that the Islands of Samoa are neutral territory 
in which the citizens and subjects of the Three Signatory 
Powers have equal rights of residence, trade, and personal 



2i8 William Walter Phelps 

protection. The Three Powers recognize the independence 
of the Sainoan government and the free right of the natives to 
elect their Chief or King and choose their form of government 
according to their own laws and customs. Neither of the 
powers shall exercise any separate control over the Islands or 
the government thereof. 

The same article declared that Malictoa should be 
recognized as king and his successor should be elected 
according to the laws and customs of Samoa. A supreme 
court was provided for and the chief justice, who was to 
be the supreme judicial officer in the land, with jurisdic- 
tion over both local and international disputes, was to be 
named by the three signatory Powers in common accord, 
or, failing that agreement, be named by the King of 
Sweden and Norway. The treaty prohibited the natives 
from selling their lands to foreigners except under certain 
restrictions, and it provided for a land court to investigate 
titles already acquired. The town of Apia was to be 
under the control of a municipal council consisting of six 
members and a president, the latter to be agreed upon by 
the three Powers, or, failing such agreement, to be selected 
from the nationality of Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzer- 
land, Mexico, or Brazil. The si.x councillors were to be 
elected by the tax-payers of Apia, and as the Germans 
preponderated, this seemed to give the control of Apia 
to the Germans. Perhaps this was the only point in 
which the Germans gained a material advantage in the 
Conference. 

The treaty also established a scheme of taxation and 
revenue for the islands and restricted importation of arms 
and ammunition and intoxicating liquors. 

The treaty was signed by the Commissioners of the 
three Powers at the Foreign Office in Berlin on the 14th 
of June. The Commissioners separated with mutual 
compliments and good wishes. Throughout the negotia- 
tions the utmost courtesy and good feeling had been 



His Life and Public Services 219 

maintained and all sides seemed satisfied with the result. 
Within half an hour after the tri-partite agreement had 
been signed, Count Bismarck left Berlin for Koenigstein, 
on his regular leave of absence, and Mr. Phelps took a 
train for Bremcrhaven, there to catch the Fidda for New 
York. Messrs. Kasson and Bates tarried in Europe a 
short time before returning to America. 

Mr. Phelps had not only made many friends among 
the German ofificials at Berlin, but he had become popular 
with the German press and people. His hard work and 
his friendly bearing had earned for him the good wishes 
of every one and the hope was frequently expressed that 
his Government would send him back to Berlin in the 
more permanent position of Minister. These expressions 
were entirely spontaneous, but the same sentiment was 
being voiced in America on account of his splendid dip- 
lomatic success. 

He reached New York on the 24th of June, and was 
greeted by a number of friends and newspaper men, the 
latter all being eager for interviews on the "Peace and 
Honor" treaty which he carried with much care in a little 
yellow leather bag. 

The first talk he had with representatives of the press 
on landing was in response to their inquiries whether the 
report was correct that English was the language used in 
the Conference. He said : 

It is a fact, and one of some significance. It is the first 
time in the history of diplomacy that negotiations have not 
been carried on in French, the language of diplomacy. It was 
done on our motion, and as English was the national language 
of six out of nine of the Commissioners, and the Germans, 
who speak English well, fell good naturedly in with us, that 
became the language of the Conference, though we started out 
in French, which all the Commissioners spoke. It may be 
that German antipathy to anything French helped to establish 
this important precedent. I don't know. However, the fact 
remains. Even the language of the treaty is English, and it 



220 William Walter Phelps 

is the first European treaty written in English, which I do not 
doubt is going to become the language of diplomacy, for the 
English tongue, through American and English colonization, 
travel, and trade, is gaining so much more rapidly in use over 
all other languages in every important part of the world. We 
all found that good, sturdy, Anglo-Saxon was the most exact 
and satisfactory tongue in which to couch delicate and in- 
tricate points. I rejoice that the new era was inaugurated 
by us. 

The prediction of the thoroughly American diplomat 
in this interview has been partially fulfilled at least, for 
since the innovation which he promoted in the Samoan 
Conference, the proceedings of several noted conferences 
and international gatherings on the European continent 
have been conducted in English. 

Mr, Phelps hastened the same day of his arrival to 
Washington, which he reached the following morning and 
called upon Secretary Blaine, with whom he went to the 
White House and presented the treaty to President Har- 
rison, who greeted him very cordially. 

The best evidence of the satisfaction of President 
Harrison with the work of Mr. Phelps and his conferees 
was given with a promptness that surprised and pleased 
the New Jersey statesman. After a short talk about the 
Conference and the treaty which had just been delivered, 
President Harrison opened a drawer and took out a com- 
mission as Minister to Germany, which he handed to Mr. 
Phelps with a very high compliment and an invitation to 
Mr. Phelps to take breakfast at the White House the 
following day. With this handsome recognition for bril- 
liant work from the ruler of the nation in his pos.session, 
and the compliments of friends and the praise of the press 
from all parts of the country in his ears, Mr. Phelps re- 
tired to his estate in New Jersey to enjoy a well-earned 
rest. 

Many efforts were made to do honor to Mr. Phelps in 
a public manner for the distinguished triumph obtained 



His Life and Public Services 221 

by America in the diplomatic battle at Berlin, but with a 
modesty and fair-mindedness which always characterized 
him, he courteously declined such honors. His reasons 
were given in full to the Phelps Guards of Paterson, N. 
J. His letter to them shows how he regarded the work 
of his colleagues. He wrote: 

Gentlemen : Your note was one of the pleasantest things 
which greeted me on my arrival. I mean the note signed by 
Hilton and Griggs and others of the old members, as your 
committee, to tell me that " the Guards wished to express their 
appreciation of my service at the Samoan Conference in Berlin 
and to tender me a reception and congratulations." 

Now, I '11 tell you why I was so long in answering it. I was 
trying to reconcile inclination with duty, because I wanted 
very much to accept your invitation. 

I cannot do it after all, and I feel sure that you will think 
my reasons are good ones when you hear them. While wait- 
ing to make up my mind I have had many suggestions that 
various organizations with which I am connected for pleasure 
or profit proposed to do me similar honor. This has made me 
think that were I to accept these kindnesses I should lack the 
time which I must devote to my private affairs, in view of the 
responsible duties abroad to which the President has assigned 
me. But another objection is more conclusive — because other 
people's interests are concerned and I can't disregard them. 
I don't like to celebrate the results of the Samoan Conference 
when my colleagues on the Commission are absent. If there 
is anything to celebrate — and, while a diplomatic padlock ties 
my own lips, I have not failed to read in the English and Ger- 
man press that in their opinion the interests of the United 
States and of Samoa were not neglected at Berlin — the credit 
must be shared at least equally with my accomplished col- 
leagues on the American Commission. To these were largely 
due the success of the Conference, and I should be loath, by 
any public celebration in their absence, to indicate that I 
claimed any more than my share witli them of a battle honor- 
ably fought. 

With grateful acknowledgments of this fresh proof of a 



222 William Walter Phelps 

devotion on the part of the Phelps Guards which nearly twenty 
years has not chilled, I am gratefully yours, 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 

Teaneck, July lo, 1889, 

After the first wave of gratification and applause had 
passed over the country, partisan papers began to cast 
doubts upon the measure of success secured by the Amer- 
ican Commissioners. These criticisms were all made in 
the dark, as the terms of the treaty were all kept secret 
until it was presented to the Senate for ratification. 
Then the treaty came before that body in January, 1890, 
and it was published. Then it was known and acknow- 
ledged that the American Commissioners had secured 
practically everything contended for by the Government. 
It was ratified by the Senate on February 4, 1890, by a 
vote of 38 to 12, and events proved that it was a wise 
and successful settlement of difificulties which had for 
many years disrupted the peace of the beautiful islands 
in the South Pacific. Happiness and peace were restored 
to a naturally amiable people. 



CHAPTER XXII 

Minister to Germany— The Appointment Popular in the United States and 
in Germany— Cordial Reception at the Berlin Court — The Em- 
peror's Friendly Speech at the Presentation— Search for a Residence 
—His First Thanksgiving Dinner at Which Many Americans Were 
Present — Reception by the Empress — The Life of a Diplomat — Its 
Varied Duties and Many Social Obligations 

WITH a unanimity that was surprising the press and 
the people of the United States greeted the 
appointment of William Walter Phelps to be Minister 
Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the German 
Court as a graceful recognition by President Harrison of 
the splendid diplomatic service the New Jersey statesman 
had rendered to his country. The appointment became 
known within a day or two after Mr. Phelps had returned 
with his Samoan treaty in the famous yellow leather bag, 
and the country was ringing with the praises of the 
American Commissioners who had won such a gratifying 
victory in diplomacy, so that the prompt and substantial 
reward bestowed upon the leading diplomat found a cor- 
dial response in the hearts of the nation. Even the anti- 
administration newspapers congratulated the Government 
on such a graceful act and all critics admitted that Mr. 
Phelps was eminently qualified for the position. Thus 
were fulfilled the prognostications of the political prophets 
when Mr. Phelps was appointed a Samoan Commissioner, 
and thus were fulfilled the political hopes of the German 
Court after it had become acquainted with the admirable 
qualities of Mr. Phelps, that he would succeed Minister 

223 



224 William Walter Phelps 

Pendleton. Seldom, if ever, has a political appointment 
met with such universal approval, and it was a peculiar 
tribute to the genius of Mr. Phelps that after wringing 
from Germany such a material diplomatic victory, the 
Germans should be so glad to have him among them 
permanently. 

After receiving his commission from President Harri- 
son, Mr. Phelps retired to the enjoyment of his New 
Jersey home for a short time. During the summer he 
visited relatives in Pennsylvania and, with his daughter, 
spent some time at Bar Harbor, where Mr. Blaine and his 
family were staying. He spent a great deal of time in 
putting his business affairs in shape for a protracted ab- 
sence and on September 7, 1889, he sailed for Europe on 
the steamer Elbe. For several days before he sailed Mr. 
Phelps was in constant receipt of letters and telegrams of 
congratulation and farewell from all over the land and a 
great many friends and relatives were at the pier to see 
him off. The new Minister arrived in Berlin on Septem- 
ber 1 8th, and took rooms at the Kaiserhof. He took 
charge of the Legation the following day, and his first 
public function occurred on September 26th, when he 
presented his credentials to Emperor William, being 
introduced by Count Herbert Bismarck. The Emperor 
gave him a most cordial reception, and in response to Mr. 
Phelps's assurance that he would do his best to maintain 
and foster the friendly relations existing between Ger- 
many and the United States, the Emperor made some 
impromptu remarks that were widely quoted and com- 
mented upon at the time as being free from the stiffness 
usually accompanying such audiences and more cordial 
than might have been expected. He expressed pleasure 
at the appointment of Mr. Phelps, whose words of assur- 
ance gave him great gratification, antl he did not doubt 
that Mr. Phelps would be successful in his endeavors to 
continue the good relations which had obtained between 
the two countries for over a century. 



His Life and Public Services 225 

From my early youth [he said] I have been a great admirer 
of the mighty and growing commonwealth, which you repre- 
sent, and the study of your history in peace and in war has 
always interested me very much. Of the many prominent 
qualities possessed by your countrymen it is especially their 
enterprise, tlieir sense of order, and their inventive genius 
which direct the attention of the world to them. The Ger- 
mans feel themselves so much the more attracted toward the 
people of the United States, as they are bound to the Ameri- 
cans through the many ties which the community of race pro- 
duces. The most prominent feeling of these people is that 
of kin and of tried friendship and the future will only increase 
the heartiness of our relations. 

The audience was extended far beyond the usual time 
of such functions so that Mr. Phelps and Count Bismarck 
missed the train by which they intended to return to 
Berlin. That evening Count Bismarck gave a dinner to 
Mr. Phelps, which was attended by the principal attaches 
of the United States Legation, and the other guests were 
the Italian Charg^ d'Affaires, Marquis de Beccaria Incisa, 
the English Charge d'Affaires, Mr. Beauclerk, the chief of 
the German navy, Admiral von der Goltz, General von 
Hanke, Chief of the Emperor's military cabinet, General 
Aide-de-Camp Count Wedel, Captain and Imperial Aide- 
de-Camp Baron von Senden, Baron von Alvensleben, 
Lieutenant von Below, Baron von Holstein, Count 
Kanitz, Professor von Gneist, and other distinguished 
gentlemen. Mr. Phelps took Countess William Bismarck, 
who acted as hostess, in to dinner. 

This marked his reception into ofificial life in Berlin and 
thereafter Mr. Phelps was a prominent figure at all the 
social events of the German Court and of high ofificial 
Berlin circles. On October nth he was presented to the 
German Empress at a gala performance at the Royal 
Opera House given in honor of the Czar of Russia. He 
was the only man in the brilliant assemblage who had 

neither color in his clothes nor gold upon his coat as he 

15 



226 William Walter Phelps 

was led to the foyer by Marechal de la Cour Count von 
Eulenburg. Three days later he was presented to Em- 
press Frederick at her palace in Unter den Linden. 
These social distinctions and others of lesser note kept 
Mr. Phelps constantly before the public, both in Ger- 
many and the United States, and he very quickly got the 
reputation of being the most popular Minister America 
had ever sent to Berlin. 

While he yielded much time to the demands of society, 
Mr. Phelps never for a moment neglected his official 
duties and all through his public career he was known as 
a hard worker. Although he entertained and was enter- 
tained a great deal, he was constantly at his desk during 
business hours and within a month after taking charge of 
the Legation he had practically mastered the routine 
work of his office. His first difficulty was in finding a 
suitable residence. Aided by the P'oreign Office, his 
numerous friends at the Court and in the diplomatic 
corps, he searched through all the desirable parts of Ber- 
lin offering to pay any price asked for suitable quarters. 
He was temporarily located at the Kaiserhof in the suite 
of apartments once tenanted by Lord Rosebery and 
afterwards by Mr. Villard, the American railway magnate. 
He tried to rent the famous Borsig palace, built by the 
great German ironmaster but never occupied, and which 
had been sought in vain by the governments of P" ranee, 
England, Italy, and even Germany for official purposes. 
Mr. Phelps offered to pay a rent of $20,000 a year during 
the period of his residence in Berlin, but his offer met 
with the same polite refusal that had attended all previous 
efforts of the same kind. He finally secured a home in 
the large new building at the corner of Dorotheen and 
Neue Wilhelm Strasse and spent a small fortune in re- 
building, remodelling, and furnishing it according to his 
own tastes and those of Mrs. Phelps. 

Mrs. Phelps left him in October and returned to Amer- 
ica to make final preparations for her permanent removal 



His Life and Public Services 227 

to Berlin. During the same month he received notice 
that Rutgers College in New Jersey had conferred upon 
him the degree of LL.D. 

Early in November Count Schouvaloff, the Russian 
Ambassador in Berlin, gave a dinner in honor of Minister 
Phelps. During that month Mr. Phelps entertained Ber- 
lin society and American visitors with lavish hospitality, 
ending up with the magnificent Thanksgiving Day ban- 
quet, which was the greatest affair of its kind ever seen 
in Berlin. At that time the American colony in Berlin 
was not homogeneous and although they all celebrated 
Thanksgiving Day as the national holiday they were not 
united. The members of the so-called "American 
church " would have a celebration of their own, apart 
from the more aristocratic Episcopalians, who worshipped 
in the chapel of St. George. The ladies who had been 
brought up in the principles of strict temperance looked 
with horror upon those rollicking students who found no 
harm in a glass of foaming lager beer or the bon vivantcs 
who dallied with the sparkling champagne. The dissen- 
sions caused war and disunion in the American camp. 
Minister Phelps in looking forward to the celebration of 
Thanksgiving Day saw this dissension and determined to 
bring about peace, union, and good fellowship among his 
countrymen. He called a meeting composed of men 
from all factions, old residents of Berlin and late arrivals, 
the millionaire and the poor student, the votary of re- 
ligion and the worldling. With diplomatic tact Mr. 
Phelps reconciled the conflicting factions, and when the 
meeting adjourned, all had pledged themselves to a 
hearty support of the measures proposed. A great ban- 
quet, a concert by American musical students of talent, 
and a ball were to be given on Thanksgiving Day and all 
Americans were welcome. The price of admission was 
placed so low as to allow the poorest to attend. In order 
to meet the heavy expenses, which could not be covered 
by the admission fee, Mr. Phelps placed his purse at the 



228 William Walter Phelps 

disposal of the two committeemen having this matter in 
charge, but in order to spare the feelings of the poorer 
students nothing of this was said to any one. Everj'- 
body was supposed to have contributed his full share of 
the expenses. 

The dinner and the festivities following it were a great 
success. Never before had there been so large and so 
brilliant a party of Americans gathered in Berlin. I\Iin- 
ister Phelps's popularity among the leading circles at Ber- 
lin induced men of such high standing as Count Herbert 
Bismarck and Prince Radziwill to grace the feast with 
their presence and their oratory. But the main result 
and the most important one was that thenceforth the 
Americans in Berlin kept a united front. They might 
differ in their personal views, but in their manifestations 
of public spirit and of national kinship they acted in uni- 
son thereafter. Nearly four hundred and fifty Americans 
sat down to that famous dinner in the great hall of the 
Kaiserhof. Minister Phelps presided. At his right sat 
Count Bismarck, at his left Prince Radziwill. At the 
right hand of Count Bismarck, Mrs. Phelps, who had re- 
turned from America a few days before, was seated. 
Miss Phelps sat by the side of Prince Radziwill. 

In opening the proceedings Mr. Phelps said that it was 
the largest and most successful Thanksgiv^ing ever held 
in Berlin and that was saying a great deal, as for twenty- 
five years they had the credit of giving a better Thanks- 
giving than any other American colony in Europe. His 
predecessors had vied with each other in the effort to 
break the record, considering that this achievement would 
be the greatest of their respective missions. In telling 
what they had to be thankful for, he said : 

We are thankful that we cherish here the traditions and 
virtues of our own country: simplicity, industry, cheerfulness, 
brotherly kindness, and morality. It is easy to cherish them 
here in Germany, because Germany cherishes the same virtues, 



His Life and Public Services 229 

and the same traditions. That makes it easier for us to 
practise them and we do practise them. Five hundred young 
men pursue their education at school or at the university, 
who are neither deficient in spirit nor in youth; and not a 
story of disorder or crime reaches the Legation. Three hun- 
dred young women, young and — and in the presence of Mrs. 
Phelps I dare not say more, and in the presence of these speci- 
mens before me I cannot say less — young and not unattractive 
— pursue their studies here, go to the opera and theatre and 
concert, are largely without male protection; and yet, not a 
breath of scandal ever clouds the white mirror which reflects 
their honorable life. If you want another fact, go to the Amer- 
ican chapel late and see if you can get a seat, or go to the 
Anglo-American church, and ask Mr. Earee to get you a sitting. 
In the sweetest modulation of his most comforting voice, he 
will have to tell you, " There will be no sitting, until we build 
our additions." 

I will admit there are some drawbacks. We are living in 
Berlin and it is not yet a paradise. Sometimes there is scarcity 
of sunshine, there seems to be always a superfluity of police. 
But what are these to you ? who in the fog and in the police 
station can comfort yourself with this thought! " We are here 
in person, we need to write no letters and to send no attorneys. 
We are here in person and can receipt on the spot for our share 
of the great fortune left us by our ancestor, who died in Pome- 
rania in 1763, leaving many millions of dollars and not a single 
heir." 

If we can have such a Thanksgiving here, what Thanks- 
giving ought our friends to have at home ? 

They will thank God— least of all, for that material pros- 
perity which is a wonder of the century. It mocks all prece- 
dents and defies all description. They will thank God more, 
though, because every citizen can have a home — the only 
nation yet born into the world where a poor man can have 
one. They will thank God most of all, that in the midst of 
its material prosperity, in these prosperous homes, they still 
practise the virtues of their fathers. They prize education, 
they honor and practise industry, they love their country, they 
worship their God. Sixty millions in happy and comfortable 



230 William Walter Phelps 

homes enjoying civil and religious freedom, all of them, and 
all of us — all our countrymen at home and abroad shall to- 
day, as they gather about their well spread board, give one 
glance to their country's happy present, to their country's 
wonderful future, and then gratefully and proudly say : " Thank 
God we are Americans! " Ladies and gentlemen, I propose 
the health of the President of the United States. 

Count Bismarck responded to the toast of "The Em- 
peror of Germany," and concluded by proposing the 
health of Mr. Phelps. Prince Radzivvill to ' ' The Ladies, 
ex-Consul-General Kreismann to "The Day we Cele- 
brate," and Consul Hubbard to "The Consular Service." 
After the dinner Mrs. Phelps, assisted by a committee of 
ladies, held an informal reception, after which followed 
the ball. 

Thanksgiving over, the usual routine of life was re- 
sumed. Mr. and Mrs. Phelps continued to reside at the 
Kaiserhof, receiving daily new social ceremonies. Christ- 
mas was kept with the usual ceremonies, nor were the 
poor forgotten. Naturally enough the numerous kind 
acts and benefactions of the United States Minister and 
his family were kept a secret, but two acts of charity out 
of a hundred unnoticed became known to the newspapers 
and were given publicity. On the 28th of December the 
Empress Augusta gave a special reception to Mr. Phelps 
in the presence of her full Court. Count Nesselrode, as- 
sisted by Baron von Ende, made the presentation. The 
Empress, in the course of her cordial conversation with 
Mr. Phelps, expressed her lifelong interest in American 
affairs and her great desire that the people of the United 
States should use their immense resources always in the 
interest of the peace of the world. 

Mr. Phelps was now in the full tide of his official life at 
Berlin— popular and busy. While the newspapers of the 
day were constantly reporting public incidents and affairs 
with which he was connected they did not nor could they 



His Life and Public Services 231 

show the daily routine through which he ploughed and 
by which he accomplished valuable service to his country 
and innumerable acts of kindness and courtesy to his 
fellow-citizens. This part of his duties required patient 
and energetic work and a practical knowledge of men. 
Not a day elapsed but some "military case," passport 
application, or other question of citizenship was brought 
to the notice of the minister, and Mr. Phelps gave them 
all careful attention and consideration. There were ques- 
tions of all kinds from scientific, educational, charitable, 
and legal institutions at home requiring careful and fre- 
quently lengthy answers. Some college desired to obtain 
information as to certain new scientific processes or a 
library wrote to know about some rare books. Charitable 
institutions inquired about philanthropical work in Ger- 
many and legal institutions sought information on points 
of law. American inventors, merchants, railway men, and 
others of all kinds and all degrees of worthiness asked his 
aid in presenting their interests to the German Govern- 
ment and people. Students as well as agents of the 
different departments of the United States and the sepa- 
rate State governments came in large numbers to study 
the public institutions, the schools, the mines, the methods 
of government in Germany. For all of these permission 
had to be obtained from the German Government to visit 
the different institutions in their pursuit of knowledge. 

The Minister standing in loco parentis to all Americans 
within his jurisdiction, to him come all his country-men in 
trouble — the American who does not wish to submit to 
the tax laws of Germany, the American who has gotten 
into trouble through no fault of his own, and the Ameri- 
can who has gotten into trouble through his own fault. 
Every American artist who wishes to make his or her 
debut in Berlin, the Mecca of American musical students, 
went to the Legation for aid and encouragement. Many 
who were in financial difficulties called and great care and 
pains were taken to help all worthy cases. There were 



232 William Walter Phelps 

also numerous auxiliary congresses of the World's Colum- 
bian Fair that called for information and advice and con- 
sumed much time. 

Added to these strictly business matters were the social 
obligations of the Minister — obligations which in a city 
like Berlin, where so many eminent Americans congre- 
gate, were far from being light. The hospitality of the 
Legation, however, was not confined to prominent peo- 
ple alone. All Americans were welcome, and frequent 
entertainments were given to the whole American colony, 
a service not to be undervalued in a city where hundreds 
of American young men and women had a studious and 
lonely life. To these the opportunity for social inter- 
course under the care and protection of their Minister 
meant a great deal. It will thus be seen that the life of 
the American Minister at Berlin was far removed from 
the butterfly existence which such missions are sometimes 
thought to be. On the contrary, if understood and car- 
ried out, as Mr. Phelps did understand and practise it, 
the work of the Legation was exacting and important. 
The attention and patronage he gave to American stu- 
dents of talent caused his fame to spread in these circles, 
and the numbers of sucli students increased by hundreds 
during his stay in Berlin. His high social standing and 
his friendship with the best families of tlie German no- 
bility attracted a great many wealthy Americans who 
were travelling in Europe to Berlin, so that the American 
colony within a year or so after his appointment was 
multiplied many times in numbers and Berlin became a 
popular stopping-place for all American travellers. 

Repeatedly during the year 1 890 there appeared reports 
in the newspapers that Mr. Phelps contemplated resigning 
his post at Berlin in onlcr to return and re-enter New 
Jersey politics. These reports, it is believed, were the 
outcome of the fears of his political foes, because as a 
matter of fact there was no truth in them. Some of 
these reports had it that he intended to re-enter Congress 



His Life and Public Services 233 

as a member of the Lower House, while others said he 
wanted to become Senator from New Jersey. There was 
even another rumor that Secretary Blaine was about to 
retire and that Mr. Phelps was to become Secretary of 
State. However lacking in fact these reports were, they 
caused a great deal of speculation in his native State and 
considerable uneasiness among certain politicians who had 
nothing to gain by the presence of the German Minister. 

The social season in Berlin in 1890 was a short one 
owing to the death of Empress Augusta. Mr. and Mrs. 
Phelps attended the grand Cour held on New Year's 
Day by the Emperor and Empress and a brilliant dinner 
given by the Count and Countess Waldersee, the object of 
which was to bring together the families of Field Marshal 
vonMoltkeand Minister Phelps. Mrs. Phelps had issued in- 
vitations for a large dinner which was to open relations be- 
tween American and other circles but she had to withdraw 
them on account of the death of the Empress Augusta. 

At the reception given by the Young Men's League of 
the American church to all the English-speaking young 
men studying in Berlin, Mr. Phelps made a speech in 
which he referred in the most feeling terms to the late 
Empress whose last function was her reception to him on 
Saturday afternoon before New Year's Day. He spoke 
of her love of peace, which seemed to be uppermost in 
her mind all the time, and of her behest to him that he 
would promote the friendship between her country and 
his own, ending with, "And you will not forget that I 
have the peace of the world at heart." 

A day or two afterward [continued Mr. Phelps], my mind 
still full of the earnest, pleading tones in which she had 
spoken, I met in print an account of an interview which Bayard 
Taylor had had with the Empress Augusta in 1878. It seemed 
that the Empress had been forced by the illness of the Emperor 
to take his place in the interview. And to my delight I found 
that she had expressed to Mr. Taylor twelve years before— not 
as her sentiments, as words from her husband — almost identical 



234 William Walter Phelps 

wishes. The duty her husband taught her, she was following 
to the end — the duty of brotherly love and kindness — the things 
that make for peace. 

The Empress said to the Countess von Hacke, " I have only 
one desire, and that is, that people will say of me when I am 
dead, ' She was a good woman." " 

She has her wish. When the purple standard dropped on 
the palace roof, the faithful watchers in the street wept — not 
for an Empress, but for a good woman. The wires told her 
death in every capital and the echo that came back was of 
universal sorrow. Not for the consort of a Prince, a King, 
and an Emperor, but for a good woman, who was dead. 

Mr. and Mrs. Phelps viewed the solemn pageant of the 
funeral from the Hotel Royal, which offered a command- 
ing view of the great procession, and they had as guests 
at their window Mrs. Carpenter, Mr. and M. Ghika, the 
Servian Minister, Mr. von Pavlovitsch. Professor and 
Mrs. Leyden, Dr. Krauel, of the Foreign Office, and Mrs. 
Krauel, Mr. Coleman, Mr. Crosby, and others. 

All formal social functions were suspended for a time 
in Berlin, but Mr. and Mrs. Phelps generally had two or 
three guests at their table. Among those who were oc- 
casionally seen at their board during the season of mourn- 
ing were Ceremonienmeister von Usedom, Mr. Kirchenius, 
of the Siamese Legation, Mr. French, P'irst Secretary 
of the British Legation, Count Bismarck, Baron von 
Wangenheim, Count Murawicff. the Russian Charge 
d' Affaires, Paul von Below, Baron von Eckertstein. 
During this season the American Minister had private 
audiences with Prince Alexander and Prince George of 
Prussia, cousins of the late Emperor Frederick, and they 
exhibited great cordiality toward Mr. Phelps and spoke 
pleasantly of their friendship with several Americans. In 
February Miss Bowler of Cincinnati, a niece of the late 
Minister Pendleton, was married to Mr. John Livingston 
of New York, in Berlin, and Mr. Phelps acted as one of 
the witnesses. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Phelps Home in Berlin— Mr. and Mrs. Phelps Dine with the Ger- 
man Chancellor— Fall of Bismarck— Intimate Friendship of the Iron 
Chancellor and the American Minister— Begins the Struggle for the 
Introduction of American Pork into Germany — American Rifle 
Teams in Germany— International Medical Conference — Fourth of 
July Celebrated at the Kaiserhof — The American Minister Pre- 
sides and Makes a Notable Speech— A Trip Home Creates a Political 
Sensation — Newspaper Interviews — Speech on Irish Home Rule in 
Paterson — Visits His Ancestral Home in Connecticut — A Reception 
by the Union League Club of Hudson County— Interview with 
President Harrison and Secretary Blaine— Given Dinner at the 
Union League Club, New York— Returns to Berlin 

MR. PHELPS and his family moved into their new 
home at the beginning of the month of February 
and Mr. and Mrs. Phelps gave a reception there on Feb- 
ruary 6th. It was described at the time as one of the 
largest gatherings of Americans that had occurred in 
Europe for a long time and they all admired the palatial 
interior of the new residence at the corner of Dorothecn 
and Neue Wilhelm Strasse. It was a revelation to the 
many notable Germans who also attended the reception 
and who for the first time saw an ideal "American home" 
in the German capital. The wealthy American Minister 
had spared no expense to provide a private house suitable 
for his lavish hospitality. What had formerly been stores 
on the ground floor had been ripped out and converted 
into a great kitchen and dwelling rooms for the servants. 
The second floor, which had eight windows on each street, 
was arranged for state reception rooms and dwelling 
rooms. The third floor was used for domestic purposes. 

235 



236 William Walter Phelps 

To bring all these rooms into easy communication an- 
other store on New Wilhelm Street was converted into a 
second vestibule and stairway. The ladies of the family 
carried out their own idea in making the rooms inhabit- 
able and agreeable, and it was no light task for the Berlin 
decorators to follow their views, although they afterward 
acknowledged the effect to be charming. No dust and 
darkness collectors were allowed. Throughout the second 
floor all the doors were removed so that an unobstructed 
view through the entire suite of rooms was given. Al- 
coves and arches marked the divisions of the rooms and 
light-colored draperies and curtains furnished the win- 
dows. The walls were hung with beautiful pictures and 
etchings. The floor was covered with wooden mosaic 
and the ballroom was the wonder of the German nobility. 
The patriotism of the Minister was manifested by a thirty- 
six foot American flag in the main vestibule of the house. 
There was one picture in the house which Mr. Phelps 
prized very highly and to which he frequently called the 
attention of his visitors. It represented the scene in the 
Parliament Court when the ill-fated Charles I. of England 
was tried and condemned. John Phelps, the ancestor of 
the American Minister, was clerk of the court and he ap- 
pears in the picture sitting at his desk, with the king, as 
prisoner, sitting in front of him. Prince Bismarck had 
the pleasure of viewing the picture, but his comments on 
the court of regicides have not been preserved. 

At this time the Samoa treaty was ratified by the 
United States Senate and this gave Mr. Phelps great 
satisfaction. When the news reached Berlin, Count 
Herbert Bismarck called upon Minister Phelps at the 
American Legation before ofifice hours to offer his con- 
gratulations, and Minister Phelps and his wife were invited 
to dinner by Prince Bismarck to make the acquaintance 
of the family and to drink a glass of Rhenish wine over 
the settlement of the Samoan troubles. The dinner hour 
was an early one and the only person present exclusive of 



His Life and Public Services 237 

the family and Mr. and Mrs. Phelps was Dr. Schwenninger. 
After dinner they went to the library and the Chancellor 
lighted his long pipe and sent for some whiskey which, 
he said, was a recent gift from a friend in the United 
States. The Chancellor then proposed, and all drank, 
the health of the President of the United States. 

One of the notable events of the month of March was 
a dinner given to the Honorable Charles Emory Smith and 
Mrs. Smith, who were the guests of Minister Phelps dur- 
ing their brief stay in Berlin on their way to St. Peters- 
burg. Mr. Smith had just been appointed American 
Minister to Russia. 

Prince Bismarck resigned the German Chancellorship in 
March, 1 890, and retired to his country estate, Friederichs- 
ruhe. There was a complete breach between the Emperor 
and the great Chancellor, and it was a perilous undertak- 
ing to give proofs of friendship to the retiring statesman. 
Minister Phelps, however, had contracted such an intimate 
friendship with Bismarck that he was one of the few manly 
spirits who did not fear the royal displeasure. He was 
one of the last guests at the Bismarck palace, and accom- 
panied the ex-Chancellor to the railway station upon his 
dramatic departure from Berlin. Wearing the uniform 
of the cuirassiers, Prince Bismarck left his palace at 5 P.M. 
and entered an open carriage that stood in waiting. As 
soon as he appeared he was greeted with stormy enthusi- 
asm. The windows of the houses in the Vicinity were 
crowded with spectators. The entire route was a sea of 
waving handkerchiefs. The crowd was so dense that the 
ex-Chancellor's horses were compelled to walk the entire 
distance from the palace to the station. There was a 
continuous roar of cheering. Following the Prince's car- 
riage came another carriage occupied by Princess Bismarck 
and other members of the family. A third carriage was 
filled with members of the American Legation. A num- 
ber of other carriages filled with friends and admirers of 
the Prince closed the procession. At the railway station 



238 William Walter Phelps 

great heaps of bouquets for the Prince and Princess were 
piled in the waiting-rooms. Prince Bismarck bade all 
farewell, Mr. Phelps and Chancellor von Caprivi being 
among the last to shake hands with him. 

The American Minister exercised his great diplomatic 
tact in this crisis, and so well discerned the dividing line 
between his personal friendship for the greatest statesman 
of the time and the duty of his high diplomatic position 
to abstain from every interference with the internal policy 
of the country to which he was accredited, that the Ger- 
man Emperor, so sensitive on such points, could find no 
fault. While Mr. Phelps still maintained his personal 
intimacy and warm friendship with the great Bismarck, 
now fallen into disfavor, yet the high regard in which 
Mr. Phelps was held at the German Court was not only 
maintained but, if possible, increased by his manly and 
dignified attitude in this critical affair. With Bismarck's 
successor. Von Caprivi, Mr. Phelps enjoyed the most 
pleasant relations, and so far as American interests were 
concerned the great change in the German administration 
had no appreciable effect. 

It was about this time that Mr. Phelps began his active 
campaign for the admission of American pork into Ger- 
many. That nation had, without good reason, excluded 
that class of American food products, and some years 
before the then American Minister to Germany caused 
considerable stir and excitement by his efforts to force 
Germany to admit this article of food. Such an attempt 
to bully Bismarck into a repeal of the obnoxious restric- 
tions very naturally failed. Mr. Phelps adopted an en- 
tirely different course. He took advantage of the oft 
expressed desire of Germany to cultivate the friendship 
of the United States, and broached the subject of an 
abrogation of the restrictive laws against American meats 
and lard in a quiet and friendly spirit. It was well known 
that there was a great market for certain kinds of Ameri- 
can food products in Germany, and the only obstacle was 



His Life and Public Services 239 

the legal barrier erected by the German Chancellor as an 
economic measure. When Mr. Phelps took the matter 
up he found that there was a growing sentiment in Ger- 
many in favor of the removal of these restrictions, as it 
was felt that Germany must be fed in part from other 
countries. He met the greatest opposition from the great 
landed gentry of Germany and the smaller fry of Agrarians 
based on the well-known policy of Bismarck. Against 
these factors Mr. Phelps engaged all his diplomatic tact 
and strength of persistency. Gently and imperceptibly 
over the dinner-table, at a friendly game of whist, any- 
where and everywhere friends were made and the hostile 
feeling removed, while in the Reichstag the opposition, 
among whose members Minister Phelps also had many 
warm friends, made motion after motion for the repeal of 
the obnoxious pork ordinance. In this way, little by 
little, the power of resistance became weakened, but it 
was a long and trying struggle for two years before he 
finally swept away the prohibitory laws, and as Mr. Phelps 
wittily expressed it, the American pig "marched in tri- 
umph through the Brandenburger Gate." His first public 
efforts in this campaign were occasioned by the refusal to 
admit Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which comprised 
a number of buffaloes that fell within the prohibition 
against the importation of American cattle. Of course 
this was a mere enforcement of the letter of the law, oc- 
casioning a great deal of levity at the time, and Mr. Phelps 
quickly obtained the necessary permission for the admis- 
sion of the show cattle, and it proved to be a somewhat 
happy manner for Mr. Phelps to break the ice. 

An excellent opportunity for the display of the friendly 
relations existing between Germany and the United States 
was given during the summer of 1890 when the American 
rifle teams visited Germany and took part in the great 
Deutsches Bundes Schutzenfest. The German-American 
rifle clubs entered Berlin in formal procession on July 3d 
and were greeted by Minister Phelps. A great Fourth 



240 William Walter Phelps 

of July dinner was given at the Kaiserhof with Mr. Phelps 
presiding. He made an eloquent speech to the toast of, 
"The Day We Celebrate and the President of the United 
States." After the usual felicitations on the day and a 
eulogy of the President, Mr. Phelps spoke at length on 
the advantages of travel and the return to be obtained 
from the money spent in that way. He said that Ameri- 
can travellers spent $150,000,000 in Europe every year, 
and some critics had remarked that they had nothing to 
show for it, but Mr, Phelps was of the opinion that the 
traveller could take more from Germany alone than was 
enough to pay his part of that great expenditure, and 
then he depicted German family life and the manner in 
which the German takes his pleasure as an object-lesson 
well worth observing, concluding thus: 

As for recreation — which we Americans need more of and 
spend more for than any other people — he sees the German 
get more for a mark than we for a dollar. Why ? Because we 
insist that our entertainments shall be expensive. And be- 
cause they are expensive many of us must content ourselves 
with few. But our traveller, looking around him, sees the Ger- 
man always amusing himself. He can, for he takes all he can 
get, however inexpensive and however simple. If he cannot 
hear Patti he won't refuse the delight of song — at the worst he 
will sing himself. If he can't hear Strauss he won't turn his 
back on humbler orchestras. And here in Berlin, if all else 
fails him, he pays five pfennige for his chair across the way in 
our " Wilhelm Platz," happy as a king because he can look at 
the Radziwill Palace, where his great Bismarck once hved. 
\Vith such lessons might we not return more genial friends and 
more cheerful citizens ? 

What may not the American traveller learn in a score of 
directions, where we are lacking ? — of an economy, which he 
sees here everywhere practised and respected ; of a love tor the 
open air so strong that a German prefers to do everything in 
it, except to die; of a love for art and nature, painting, sculp- 
ture, and music, and sky and tree and river and mountain, 



His Life and Public Services 241 

which gives as much happiness to the pauper as to the 
prince. 

All unseen of inspector or statistician, you may carry inside 
of Sandy Hook, when you go home, gentlemen, this priceless 
invoice — a larger respect for personal virtues, like simplicity, 
economy, cheerfulness, new views of the charm and extent of 
family intercourse, and a wider recognition of the ministry of 
art ; all motives to make you struggle in the interests of the 
man against our overwhelming material prosperity. So with 
good heart and conscience let us enjoy to the full this foreign 
outing. It is happiness for us, and we will make it profitable 
for tho land we love. 

God bless the United States, our country! We love it so 
much, we would have it perfect. 

This speech was widely quoted and commented upon 
in the German and American papers, most of which 
agreed with the philosophy and the economic theory 
expressed by the Minister, and the extensive publicity 
given to the speech showed the weight attached to the 
public utterances of Mr. Phelps. 

The Minister continued to work indefatigably, attend- 
ing to the routine duties of his oflfice, making new friends 
and strengthening in many ways the ramifications of his 
many diplomatic projects. Before the social season had 
closed, Mrs. Phelps had been presented to the Prince of 
Wales at a state concern; Mr. Phelps had given a dinner 
to Count Herbert Bismarck, another to Count Pappen- 
heim on the occasion of his departure to America to 
attend the marriage of his elder brother to Miss Wheeler 
of Philadelphia, a banquet to Henry M. Stanley the Afri- 
can explorer, and still another to Chancellor Caprivi. At 
the opening of the Reichstag the Emperor took occasion 
to praise Mr. Phelps privately and to say that he prized 
his acquaintance. He succeeded in getting the German 
Government to act with the United States in establish- 
ing post-ofifices on the trans-Atlantic steamers of the 
German lines, thereby securing a delivery of the mails 



242 William Walter Phelps 

from twelve to twenty-four hours quicker than thereto- 
fore. The United States postal authorities had en- 
deavored to get England and France to enter into a 
similar arrangement, but failed at that time. 

Mr. Phelps rendered material service to his countrymen 
who attended the Tenth International Medical Congress in 
Berlin in August of that year. Over six hundred Ameri- 
can physicians and surgeons, many of them men of high 
standing in their profession, some of them famous the 
world over, attended the congress. The Minister ex- 
tended to them his princely hospitality. He saw that all 
their wants were supplied and that they gained admittance 
everywhere. At the congress the Americans were the 
lions of the day, and, while this success was due to some 
extent to their great scientific attainments, the popularity 
of Mr. Phelps among the scholarly classes of Germany 
had much to do with the warm reception given to his 
countrymen. For his services and sympathy he received 
a letter of thanks from Professor Virchow, the great 
pathologist, who was president of the congress. 

In September, 1890, it was learned from the American 
Legation that the American Minister intended to go home 
on a vacation. At once all the American newspaper cor- 
respondents in Berlin were on the alert. The New York 
Herald representative obtained an interview which was 
published in that journal and in part was this: 

Yes, I am going home for as long a leave as the Department 
will grant me. I think I deserve it, for I have n't been away 
from my post for a year and have been tolerably busy, for 
there have been three conventions, any one of which would 
have been enough for a year of old in Berlin — the Schuetzen- 
fest, the Medical Congress, and the Consular Conference, 
which was adjourned after a fruitful and pleasant session. I 
shall not have anything to do with politics except to vote. 

You ask what is the prospect of American pork getting into 
Germany. Good, I think. Germany resents anything like 
menace. She can generally be coaxed into anything that is 



His Life and Public Services 243 

right, but not driven into anything. Bismarck out, or Bis- 
marck in, Germany does not change in that respect. The 
German Empire is a large body, and moves slowly; but I 'm 
not discouraged, for it moves itself in the right direction, and 
about as rapidly as the different business interests connected 
with the pork industry can stand and adapt themselves to the 
change. I see by the newspapers here that the German 
municipalities and business interests one after another fall into 
line to bombard the Chancellor, and their facts are hot shot. 

I see that Representative Ritter, in his famous speech on 
der deutsche Kaiser, gives great prominence to your epithet, 
" poor man's emperor." 

Well [replied Mr. Phelps], it was true, and there was no 
reason why I should n't call him so. There is n't an utterance 
nor an act of that young sovereign that docs not respond 
quickly to this test — his love and care of that class of his sub- 
jects who most need help. 

On September 23d, the German steamship Elbe sailed 
into New York harbor, elaborately and gaily decked with 
flags of all colors, and presented a most beautiful sight. 
The decoration was in honor of the American Minister to 
Germany, who, with Mrs. Phelps, was a passenger. The 
newspaper reporters, intent upon interviewing the Min- 
ister, had boarded the ship down the bay, and a half-score 
more were awaiting his landing, where he was met at the 
pier by his daughter and several personal friends. To 
the inquiries of the reporters he said : 

I have come home to rest and enjoy myself. I intend to 
spend my vacation upon my Teaneck farm. I feel as if I were 
already a Jersey farmer again. See, there is one of my farm 
wagons on the pier, ready to take off my luggage, and those 
lusty-looking fellows have come down fresh from Teaneck to 
give me an early welcome. I expect to live among the trees 
until I get rested, and then hunt up my friends to see that they 
have not forgotten me. No politics this time, only that I shall 
vote the Republican ticket in Bergen County at the coming 
election, and soon after return to my official duties at Berlin. 



244 William Walter Phelps 

Mr. Phelps and his party were then seated in their own 
landau and quickly driven out over the Hudson and 
Beri^en County hills and along roads lined with the golden- 
rod and purple autumnal flowers, which never look more 
beautiful than when one returns from a long absence 
abroad. Just as night was falling, the returned diplo- 
matist passed the vine-clad ruins of his former celebrated 
mansion and entered once more his Bergen County 
home, from which he had been absent more than twelve 
months. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Phelps's positive disclaimer that 
his visit was intended to have no political significance 
whatever, his arrival enlivened the newspapers through- 
out the country with rumors, conjectures, and predictions. 
The old cuts were brought out from the printing offices, 
his portrait appeared in hundreds of publications, and of 
the headings that were daily seen in the newspapers, 
these are a small sample: "Phelps the Centre of Political 
Attraction" ; "Anxious for Phelps" ; "Phelps's Influence 
Needed in Congress"; "Must Put on the War Paint in 
his Old District"; "All Parties would Welcome him to 
his Old Seat in Congress"; "Will Be the Republican 
Leader in the Next Congress." The Governorship and 
the United States Senatorship were also suggested. 
While all these allusions may have been very flattering, 
they had not the slightest influence in diverting the Ger- 
man Minister from his purpose to return at the end of his 
vacation to finish his work at Berlin. 

During his short stay in this country he received much 
social and political attention. In October he was given 
a great reception by the Union League Club of Hudson 
County, at which were present many of the distinguished 
men of New Jersey, Senators, Congressmen, Judges, ex- 
Senators and ex-Governors, and prominent party leaders. 
After warm personal greetings, in response to formal in- 
troductory remarks, the guest of the evening made a 
graceful speech, giving as an excuse for avoiding all 



His Life and Public Services 245 

politics that many of his Democratic friends were 
present. 

A great public meeting was held in Paterson to promote 
the cause of " Home Rule" in Ireland, at which Governor 
Green and other leading men of the State were speakers. 
The audience seemed to be looking to Mr. Phelps for the 
main speech, and he did not disappoint them. He made 
a strong argument, showing why it was right that Ireland 
should govern itself in home matters. He claimed that 
international law now claimed the right of self-government 
to any community that was distinctly separated from 
others by race, situation, or creed. He claimed that the 
insular situation of Ireland, its Celtic blood, if not its re- 
ligious faith, made self-government not only a right, but 
a necessity. What Ireland demanded was Irish law, not 
English law. In the course of his remarks he said : 

Irishmen do not ask for national independence. That cry 
was of the olden times. They see that no new nation, how- 
ever valorous, is able to step into the map of Europe nowa- 
days, and stay there, unless mighty in size and resources. 
Europe is a series of armed camps, and neutral independence 
is secure only to those who have large ones. What could 
Ireland do as a nation against Germany, or France, or Russia, 
or even, in the event of quarrel, against Great Britain herself ? 
But besides, even if Irishmen see a possibility of separate na- 
tional existence, they do not want it. They know what Ireland 
has contributed in the past to Great Britain. They know that 
the treasures of that great Empire, the accumulations of cen- 
turies, are largely the result of Irish effort and belong in part 
to them. Why should they surrender this magnificent herit- 
age ? Why should they give their share of British glory to 
their associates ? The eloquence of Sheridan, the learning of 
Burke, the wit of Swift, the lyres of Goldsmith and Moore; 
aye! the swords of Nelson and Wellington are but suggestions 
of what Ireland gave to Great Britain. And she does not 
purpose to leave that great Empire, which her children have 
so largely helped to develop and adorn. Ireland purposes to 



246 William Walter Phelps 

stay in the Empire to which she belongs and in it to have her 
rights. 

In October Mr. Phelps made a brief visit to the State 
of Connecticut, and spent a few days at the old Phelps 
home at Simsbury, and while there made a flying trip to 
Hartford. Here, as usual, he did not escape the atten- 
tion of the ubiquitous newspaper reporters, and in an in- 
terview he told that he had an ancestral interest in that 
city because when his father was a poor boy he walked 
there and obtained employment, and there got his start 
in life. He spoke of the many friends that he had him- 
self made in that city, and of its prosperity and growth, 
and of the sterling qualities of its citizens, saying that his 
recollection of Hartford and its vicinity had given the 
whole State of Connecticut an interest to him. In reply 
to a question he responded: 

I have found life in Berlin especially enjoyable because of 
the great similarity both in taste and manners between the 
Germans and the New England folk to which I belong. The 
people are simple, intelligent, industrious, and without pre- 
tence. The absence of all extravagance and the simplicity 
with which Germans of the highest rank live are characteristic 
of them as of our best New England people. 

The annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of 
the State of New York was on November 19th. The 
Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements for that 
brilliant affair received this letter: 

Dear Sir: 

It is with great regret that I find my engagements compel 
me to decline the honor you offer me of meeting you and your 
associates of the Chamber of Commerce at their annual dinner 
this year. 

I have not only great pride in the good work and name of 
your historic institution, but a tender feeling in the thought of 
the many old members, friends of my father and myself, whose 



His Life and Public Services 247 

number makes your portrait gallery seem to me almost as a 
private collection of my own. 

I would like to dwell upon their virtues, except that they 
would suggest how little I had [)rofited by their splendid 
example. 

Truly yours, 

William Walter Phelps. 

At this date, the New York World published the report 
of a little incident which is worthy of preservation because 
it shows so pleasantly one of Mr. Phelps's marked char- 
acteristics — a willingness always to do something for the 
comfort and welfare of others. The account read : 

Seated at a table in the dining-room of the Downtown Club 
Saturday was a good-looking man of medium stature, with a 
bronze face and a moustache tinged with gray. These points 
are not so distinctive as to make recognition of a gentleman 
lunching at the Downtown Club general. But this particular 
gentleman wore a red necktie, and of course everj'body knew 
at once that he was William Walter Phelps, United States 
Minister to Germany. His lunch was interrupted frecjuently 
by the necessity of shaking hands with a large number of 
acquaintances, but the fact that he is in reality an Envoy 
Extraordinary was not fully brought out until a distinguished- 
looking stranger, apparently a Southerner and certainly one- 
armed, approached. He informed Mr. Phelps that he was a 
South Carolinian, just elected to Congress, and that his family 
was in Dresden. He had expected to go over to spend Christ- 
mas, but business would not permit. Did Mr. Phelps know 
anybody in Dresden who might feel inclined to relieve the 
tedium necessarily experienced by a strange American family? 
Mr. Phelps did. He knew the whole American colony, and 
would see that it took the strangers in. 

" Moreover," said he, " if you will send me the name and 
address of your wife, I will ask Consul Palmer to call and 
extend any courtesy possible. And please write to your wife 
that if she or any of her family fall ill to telegraph me at Berlin 
and Mrs. Phelps will run down to Dresden and look after her," 



24S William Walter Phelps 

The newly-elected Congressman's eyes lighted and he ex- 
pressed his thanks in the heartiest manner possible. When he 
had gone, a friend asked the Minister to Germany if that were 
not an unusual case. 

" \Vhy, not at all," was the reply. " I am responsible for 
all good Americans, am I not ? It is my duty to make life as 
pleasant lor them as I can, and if they fall ill it is my duty to 
see that they are cured. Of course it is, and that is one of 
the things I have been trying to do. And, you know," he 
added, with a twinkle in his eye, " I never enjoyed any work 
so much in my life." 

The Minister, before his return to Germany, had several 
interviews with President Harrison at Washington, and 
he accompanied Secretary Blaine on a trip to Chicago, 
which was wholly of a social character. 

On the eve of the departure of Mr. Phelps for Europe 
in December, thirty of his friends, all men of high dis- 
tinction, gave him a dinner at the Union League Club in 
New York. He sailed on the steamship Wcrra, on De- 
cember 6th, accompanied by his daughter. Miss Marian 
Phelps. Upon his arrival in Berlin, Mr. Phelps resumed 
his diplomatic duties, and at the same time opened the 
social season with great splendor. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Koch's Lymph — Phelps's Social Fame in Germany — Hoyt Extradition 
Case — Chicago World's Fair — Takes the Homburg Water Treat- 
ment, and Meets the Prince of Wales 

THE Minister, upon his return, found himself over- 
whelmed with applications for "Koch lymph." 
The famous bacteriologist had just published his discovery 
of a remedy supposed to be a sure cure for phthisis, and 
from all parts of the globe flocked physicians and patients 
to Germany, The excitement at Berlin, the rush of 
seekers after health, and of those who sought wealth by 
possession of the famous "tuberculine," was almost as 
mad and exciting as the historical rush for the gold fields 
of California. Professor Koch, not yet confident of the 
value of his discovery, fearful of intrusting it to inex- 
perienced hands, was unapproachable. The medicine 
itself was manufactured in small quantities, scarcely suffi- 
cient for the demand of the Berlin hospitals. Sums as 
high as $2000 and more were in vain offered for a single 
vial, the original price of which was $6, yet Minister 
Phelps, the moment he arrived in Berlin, secured an in- 
terview with Professor Koch and managed to secure an 
arrangement for supplies of Ij^mph to American hospitals 
and medical institutions. The American physicians, who 
bore the necessary credentials, were quickly supplied, and 
long before any other foreign nation America tested the 
value of the German discovery. It was peculiarly flatter- 
ing to the national pride of American physicians who went 
to Berlin, to witness the popularity and great personal 

249 



250 William Walter Phelps 

influence of their Minister. On the steamer JlWra, which 
took over Mr. Phelps, were a number of American physi- 
cians all anxious to study the new remedy. They knew 
that it was almost impossible to reach the famous pro- 
fessor or to procure any of the fluid. Mr. Phelps came 
to their assistance, and when they landed in Bremen he 
telegraphed to Professor Koch asking him to find some 
method by which American physicians could be accom- 
modated. The great savant at once replied, expressing 
his willingness to call upon Mr. Phelps and discuss the 
matter with him. Professor Koch, who refused to see 
even crowned heads because his time was so completely 
occupied by his investigations, found time to call upon 
Minister Phelps and to make the arrangement already 
mentioned. Mr. Phelps thus secured what all other for- 
eign ministers and even high German authorities had 
failed to do. 

The social season of 1890-91 was an unusually brilliant 
one at the American Legation. Not a day passed with- 
out its great luncheon, ball, or other festivity. On 
Thursday, the regular reception day, all Americans in 
Berlin were welcome and made to feel at home. More 
than five hundred cards were left for Minister Phelps 
at the Christmas reception. Mrs. Phelps remained in 
America to look after the building operations at Teaneck 
and the hospitality of the Legation was under the charge 
of Miss Phelps, with her cousin. Miss Boardman. Mrs. 
Phelps arrived in Berlin at the end of January, and a 
brilliant ball was given at the Legation in honor of her 
return. Toward the end of February she gave a grand 
reception, those invited being mostly Americans and it 
was by far the most distinguished gathering of Americans 
in Berlin. It marked the great transition which had been 
effected by Mr. Phelps and his family in one short year. 
Previous to his appointment, American society in Berlin 
was composed almost entirely of students, and although 
this serious element continued to increase, a great many 



His Life and Public Services 251 

gay American butterflies of fashion had settled in Berlin, 
attracted by the cordial welcome which our Minister and 
his gracious wife extended to all their countrymen and 
countrywomen, and by the increased social life which had 
thus been brought into the colony. So great was the 
social fame of the Phelpses and so much were they men- 
tioned in the newspapers that an American journalist with 
more imagination than veracity perpetrated a gross fake 
on his paper by wiring a story from Berlin that Minister 
Phelps had appeared at the "Schleppen cour " in regula- 
tion court costume instead of the traditional dress-suit of 
American diplomacy. This story was widely circulated, 
accompanied with cartoons, and commented upon until it 
was shown to be entirely without foundation. 

This was probably the most active period of Mr. 
Phelps's life in Berlin, Looking over the field of his 
operations, one wonders at the ceaseless energy of a man 
who was so delicate physically. The tireless activity he 
displayed has come to be known as the "strenuous life," 
but no such robust name would be applied to the polished 
labors of the American Minister who always employed 
the art which conceals art. He undoubtedly overtaxed 
his strength and incurred an illness which required a sur- 
gical operation in June, 1891. He was confined to his 
bed for a time, but soon rallied sufficiently to sit up and 
attend to his official business. The Legation work was 
carried on by him through this period as if he were per- 
fectly well. 

It was at this time that the Hoyt extradition case arose 
and prompted Mr. Phelps to seek the enactment of a new 
extradition treaty between Germany and the United 
States. True W. Hoyt, the New York agent of the In- 
candescent Gas-Light Company of Philadelphia embezzled 
$1000 belonging to the company and escaped from New 
York on the German steamer Norviannia. He was in- 
dicted and the State Department sought to have him 
arrested at Southampton on the arrival of the steamer 



2^2 



William Walter Phelps 



there, his crime being extraditable by America's treaty 
with England but not by its treaty with Germany. 
When the officers tried to board the steamer at South- 
ampton they were prevented by the steamer's captain. 
Germa-ny had always refused to accept the almost uni- 
versal rule of international law that a merchant ship is 
amenable to the police regulations at the ports she visits. 
In nearly all of her treaties with other governments Ger- 
many insisted that her merchant vessels should be con- 
sidered her territory in the same manner as if they were 
on the high seas. Hoyt was carried to Hamburg and 
held there for a time pending the efforts of Mr. Phelps 
to have him extradited, but he was finally released as 
nothing could be done under the existing treaty. The 
case aroused much indignation in America, and although 
Mr. Phelps had to drop the matter for the time being 
owing to the pressure of more important business, he 
took it up later and succeeded in having the extradition 
treaty revised in a manner satisfactory to both nations at 
the time. 

The warmest personal relations continued between 
Prince Bismarck and Mr. Phelps, who had a natural liking 
for each other, and on the birthday of the old statesman, 
April I, 1 89 1, he received from the friendly American 
diplomat this telegram : 

I want to remind you that millions of your countrymen and 
of my countrymen are thinking of you to-day with admiration 
and affection. 

To this greeting he received from Prince Bismarck the 
reply : 

Many thanks for your kind words and friendly reminiscence. 

Mrs. Phelps spent the summer vacation in 1891 in 
Carlsbad, where she took the waters with Mrs. John 
Wanamaker. Mr. Phelps remained in Berlin, assisting 



His Life and Public Services 253 

the Chicago World's Fair Commission in obtaining from 
Germany a representative exhibit of that great nation's 
manufactures and products. The German officials were 
at first reluctant to go to any great expense in the matter, 
but Mr. Phelps used his personal influence and enthused 
the officials in power and aroused the self-interest and 
national pride of German manufacturers so that the Fair 
commission was eminently successful in Germany. The 
Minister tried to induce Herr Krupp to exhibit his guns 
at Chicago, but the famous ordnance manufacturer said 
it would cost him a quarter of a million dollars for the 
transportation and exhibition, and the idea had to be 
abandoned. As soon as he had accomplished this work, 
Mr. Phelps and Miss Phelps left Berlin for Homburg, 
where he took the famous treatment of the waters. 
There he met the renowned men and women of two conti- 
nents, the chief of whom was the Prince of Wales. The 
days were spent in taking the waters of the famous Spa, 
and the evenings in social festivities. Yet business was 
not neglected during the gayeties of Homburg. Minister 
Phelps was in constant communication with the office of 
the Legation in Berlin, the Department of State at Wash- 
ington, and the Foreign Office at Berlin. It was during 
his stay at Homburg that he realized the greatest accom- 
plishment of his mission — the introduction of American 
pork into Germany. 



CHAPTER XXV 

American Pork— Grand Official Dinners with Homely American Products 
on the Table— Persistent Work by Phelps Wins Success, but the 
Closing Negotiations Taken from Him— Newspaper Canards— 
Another Trip to Egypt— Relinquishes His Office to His Demo- 
cratic Successor— Appointed Judge of New Jersey Court of Errors 
and Appeals 

AS already mentioned, Mr. Phelps had begun the ne- 
gotiations in behalf of American meat interest almost 
at the very outset of his Berlin career, and he never ceased 
in his efforts until he had accomplished his purpose, and 
this most national achievement of his mission was hailed 
in America as a great victory of his diplomacy. What be- 
fore had been denied when sought by bluster, had now 
been gained by suavity and firmness. The year 1891 
brought a combination of circumstances especially favor- 
able to the Minister's plans. The reciprocity policy of 
Secretary Blaine, the clause of the .McKinley Tariff Bill 
empowering the President to take retaliatory measures 
against any foreign government which should discriminate 
against American products, and the agitation in the Ger- 
man Reichstag and press for a repeal of the pork ordi- 
nances — all these factors combined to give Mr. Phelps a 
good opportunity to consummate the negotiations. The 
German Government as early as April, 1891, conveyed to 
Mr. Phelps the intimation that the obnoxious pork de- 
crees were soon to be repealed. In the meantime, early 
in March, Minister Phelps had succeeded in bringing 
about a modification of the stringent law regarding the 
importation of American cattle into Germany. Thereto- 

254 



His Life and Public Services 255 

fore cattle thus imported had to undergo a four weeks' 
quarantine. The cost of feeding the cattle during so long 
a period made the quarantine law practically prohibitive. 
The first concession was the removal of this quarantine 
and the establishment of model abattoirs at Hamburg 
where the cattle were killed immediately on landing and 
shipped in refrigerator cars to all parts of Germany. 
This naturally brought about a large increase in the 
exportation of American cattle, thus greatly benefiting 
American farmers and cattlemen. One of Mr. Phelps's 
artful arguments in this campaign was a series of dinners 
to high German officials to whom he served American 
beef in the most tasty and tempting forms, thus putting 
into practical and successful operation the very old adage 
regarding the proximity of a man's stomach and his good 
will. ; 

This accomplished, Mr. Phelps continued his efforts 
for the removal of the embargo on pork, and he worked 
steadily at it all summer, and the German Government 
opposition gradually weakened before the popular senti- 
ment which the American Minister had fomented in the 
Fatherland. One of the aids of the settlement of the 
difficulty was the establishment of a meat inspection by 
the United States Government — not indeed because the 
German Government believed in the thoroughness of the 
inspection, for trichinae had been frequently found in 
certified American pork, so that Germany was compelled 
to prescribe a re-inspection, but because this inspection 
gave Germany an opportunity to retire gracefully from 
her position which Minister Phelps by his diplomacy and 
the logic of his arguments had made untenable. 

Strange to say, at the very end of the negotiation, and 
when Mr. Phelps had practically succeeded, the final pro- 
ceedings were taken out of his hands by his own Govern- 
ment and the negotiations were transferred to a conference 
held at Saratoga. The German statesmen who had charge 
of this affair were elated at the change. These disciples 



256 William Walter Phelps 

of Bismarck knew that Minister Phelps held the trump 
cards and that in dealing with him they were at a disad- 
vantage. They could only gain by a change in the field 
of operations. Nor were they mistaken. America had 
given to Germany free sugar — a present of some $16,000,- 
000 — in return for the re-admission of pork, which Mr. 
Phelps had practically made a fait accojupli before the 
Saratoga convention, and for reductions of the duty on 
cereals equal to that granted in the recent commercial 
treaties between Germany, Austria, and other countries 
of Europe, while as a matter of fact that reduction be- 
longed to America by treaty right and there was no need 
of buying it by reciprocal concessions. This treaty right 
is contained in the "most favored nations " clause of the 
treaty of 1828. Had the consummation of the negotia- 
tions been left in the hands of Mr. Phelps, it is safe to 
say that the re-admission of pork would have been ob- 
tained without any concession on the part of the United 
States. Mr. Phelps knew that the German Government 
had virtually decided upon the concession because of the 
favorable sentiment among the German people. Why 
the final negotiations were taken out of his hands has 
never been explained. In the newspapers of that time 
there was evidence that Secretary Rusk desired to take 
from Mr. Phelps the credit due to him for his great work 
in this affair, and it is a fact that in all the Secretary's 
statements on the subject no mention of Minister Phelps 
was made. 

American public opinion, however, was not mistaken 
as to where the credit properly belonged for the re-admis- 
sion of the American pig into Germany. Indeed, the 
only name mentioned in connection with the matter was 
that of Minister Phelps. The popular verdict was that 
to Mr. Phelps belonged the credit of having settled the 
pork question. Not only was this so in America, but the 
same opinion prevailed in Germany. He received many 
letters of congratulation from public men and friends, and 



His Life and Public Services 257 

votes of thanks from many corporations and public boards 
interested financially in the result. 

As soon as the pork question was settled Minister 
Phelps set about preparing the ground for the introduc- 
tion of American corn into Germany. He adopted his 
former tactics of serving it at his table to the German 
officials who partook of his hospitality. It was said at 
the time that the German notabilities were delighted with 
the gastronomic pleasures of American cornbread and 
bacon as supplied by a cook who could not be surpassed 
in Virginia in the art of making cornbread toothsome. 
Dr. Miguel was reported as having praised both the bacon 
and the cornbread, and declared that thereafter they 
would be among the supplies at his table, and that the 
duties on corn would soon be removed. Mr. Phelps's 
idea was to have Indian meal introduced as a part of the 
supplies for the German army and thus at once open up 
a great market for it. The German War Department 
made a number of experiments with American corn, and 
a favorable report was made. The department decided 
to introduce it into the rations of the German soldier. 

Although very little was said at the time about the 

difficulties experienced by the Standard Oil Company 

and the American life-insurance companies in Germany, 

when these interests were attacked by German rivals 

during this year, yet they were very important matters 

and required very delicate handling by Mr. Phelps, who 

came forward to the protection of American interests 

with his usual energy and influence. It was claimed that 

the Standard Oil Company was trying to establish a 

monopoly in Germany, Mr. Phelps laid the case of the 

great American company before the German Department 

of Commerce, and smoothed out the difficulty which 

threatened the company. As to the insurance companies, 

the law required them to invest the premiums received in 

Germany in 3I per cent. Prussian consols. Some of the 

companies received nearly 5,000,000,000 marks yearly in 
17 • 



258 William Walter Phelps 

German premiums, and this money they were investing 
at five per cent., which brought down the Finance Min- 
istry upon them. Mr. Phelps successfully interceded 
with Herr Miguel, the Imperial Finance Minister, and 
secured a reduction of the Government's demands with 
a prospect of the repeal of the law. Mr. Phelps called 
the attention of the Minister to the fact that German fire- 
insurance companies which operated largely in the United 
States were permitted to do business on depositing 
guarantee sums. The American life-insurance companies 
doing business in Germany were willing to accept a 
similar arrangement. 

Owing to the influences already mentioned, the Ameri- 
can colony in Berlin had grown so numerous that it was 
impossible to have the Thanksgiving dinner of 1891 in 
one place, as there was no one hall large enough to con- 
tain them. The celebration was therefore divided into 
three sections, one comprising the government representa- 
tives, another under the auspices of the Association of 
American Physicians, and the third under those of the 
King's Daughters of the American Church. Mr. Phelps 
appeared at all of the three places. Mark Twain, who 
made a protracted stay in Berlin during Mr. Phelps's 
term there, was a prominent figure at the celebration this 
year, and made a characteristic address. 

In December Mr. Phelps quitted Berlin on a leave of 
absence and took a two months' trip through Egypt in 
order to recuperate from the effects of the exhaustive 
work of the year. At Alexandria he was the guest of 
Judge Barringer, of the International Appellate Court, 
and was entertained by Sir William Butler, the English 
Admiral, and others. At Cairo Judge Kelly gave a din- 
ner in his honor at which Tigranc Pasha and the leading 
American visitors in Cairo were present. He remained 
in Cairo until February, and then took a trip up the Nile. 
At Luxor he was entertained by the American consul, a 
rich old Arab who had been there twenty-two years and 



His Life and Public Services 259 

who had given a similar reception to General Grant when 
he was on his tour up the Nile. On his return he visited 
the Abdin Palace at Cairo, where a reception was tendered 
to him by the new Khedive. Mr. Phelps had known the 
Khedive's father, Tewfik Pasha, and personal reminis- 
cences made the reception a very pleasant one. The 
Minister returned to Berlin in March, 1892, completely 
recovered from the poor health into which he had fallen. 
In April a newspaper "canard" was started to the effect 
that the United States were about to annex San Domingo. 
Some German correspondent then started a story about 
an alleged misunderstanding between Minister Phelps and 
the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Baron 
Marschall von Bieberstein. It was said that Germany, 
after long-continued efforts had succeeded in the attempt 
to coerce the government of San Domingo into granting 
to her the same commercial privileges as those enjoyed 
by the United States; that Mr. Phelps had called upon 
Baron Marschall von Bieberstein in regard to this matter, 
and that the German Secretary had curtly refused to dis- 
cuss the subject. This story caused much comment and 
produced a great deal of adverse criticism from the Ger- 
man press. A number of American papers' also treated 
it in a sensational manner, and it assumed all the propor- 
tions of a diplomatic "incident " until it was exploded as 
a hoax, and the excitement subsided as quickly as it had 
started. It was originated by Dr. Hugo Jacobi, editor 
of the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung, who was a notorious 
hater of everything American, and was based on a passing 
remark made by Mr. Phelps. The latter had gone to the 
Secretary of State's office on business relating to the new 
extradition treaty which was being concluded between 
Germany and the United States and during the conversa- 
tion about that treaty, Mr. Phelps jokingly referred to 
San Domingo, stating that the United States had made 
considerable concession to that republic. Baron Mar- 
schall von Bieberstein likewise jokingly replied: "I did 



26o William Walter Phelps 

not know that America is exercising a protectorate over 
San Domingo, but nevertheless Germany could not act 
differently toward San Domingo." It is needless to add 
that the relations between Minister Phelps and the Ger- 
man Cabinet were pleasant, and so remained. 

Disregarding the best interests of Mr. Blaine, some of 
his ardent but indiscreet admirers brought him forward as 
a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination of 
1892. This was a movement in opposition to President 
Harrison, whose re-nomination, it was contended by 
many who stood high in Republican councils, would 
mean unavoidable defeat for the party. Mr. Blaine felt 
that this action of his friends would naturally cause the 
relations between himself and the President to be some- 
what strained, and shortly before the meeting of the Na- 
tional Convention, the Secretary of State tendered his 
resignation, which was accepted. Straightway Mr. Phelps 
came under discussion as Mr. Blaine's successor in the 
Cabinet, and prominent party leaders, who had the confi- 
dence of the President, opened communication with the 
Minister at Berlin on the matter. But Mr. Phelps was 
so adverse to having it thought for a moment that he 
would willingly succeed his old friend in office that the 
further mention of his name for the position was discon- 
tinued. 

While strictly loyal in his friendship for Mr. Blaine, 

Mr. Phelps, as was customary and proper, sent a letter of 

congratulation to the President upon his renomination, 

to which he received the following pleasant response : 

< 

E.XECUTivE Mansion, Washington. 

June 24th, 1S92. 
Hon. William Walter Phelps, 

Legation of the United States, Berlin. 
My dear Mr. Phelps: 

I have your letter of June i ith and tliank you very sincerely 
for your congratulations which were promptly conveyed by 
cable and are now renewed in your letter. 1 have always known 



His Life and Public Services 261 

■ — before your appointment and since — of your close personal 
relations with Mr. Blaine. I have never been one who sought 
to rob another of his friends, or to make friendship for another 
the basis of suspicion on my part. I have always regarded 
Convention preferences as free, and have more than once said 
to those who expressed their desire to serve me that I thought 
their service was due to another by reason of their closer 
relations. 

With very kind regards to your family. 

Sincerely yours, 

Benj. Harrison. 

While all the other American ministers in Europe re- 
turned home in the summer of 1893 to look after their 
political interests and to take an active part in the cam- 
paign of the following autumn, Mr. Phelps remained at 
his post and gave the closest attention to the duties of 
his office. These were mostly of a routine character and 
received little attention from the newspapers of the day, 
and it was not until the Thanksgiving dinner of that year 
that another splutter was made in the newspapers over 
another fake which had even less foundation than that of 
the San Domingo "incident." Minister Phelps gave a 
great reception at his house on Thanksgiving Day, and 
at the dinner he toasted both the incoming and the out- 
going parties, the Democrats having defeated Mr. Harri- 
son for re-election. He said: 

President Harrison has given the cleanest and most success- 
ful administration in American annals. When history makes 
up its record, on every page will be written the name of Ben- 
jamin Harrison. America is the only land on which God has 
poured forth such a river of good things that it takes a Thanks- 
giving Day to dispose of them. America is the only nation 
that could have a national Thanksgiving. Other nations try 
it, and the day instead of becoming a day of thanks becomes 
a day of prayer. When other nations pray, they pray for just 
what the United States has got. The Jew and the Gentile are 



262 William Walter Phelps 

the same in America. A man's faith or his lack of faith does 
not hurt him there. 

Imagine the surprise of Mr. Phelps and his friends when, 
a few days later, there appeared in the American news- 
papers a report that he had gone out of his way to give 
the German Government a slap in the face and to praise 
Bismarck to the disparagement of the Government. Be- 
fore it could be contradicted, the story had been widely 
circulated in America, but as soon as the truth was known, 
the American newspapers with rare exceptions recalled 
whatever adverse criticisms had been made upon the fab- 
ricated report. The German press had from the begin- 
ning refused to take notice of the "canard," while the 
members of the German Government took special pains 
to show by numerous courtesies that they were aware of 
Mr. Phelps's correct utterances and that, far from offend- 
ing, his speech had, if possible, increased the regard in 
which he was held at the German Court. 

Indeed, Mr. Phelps was receiving every day expressions 
of the most sincere regret from German officials in all the 
Government's departments on the prospect of his leaving 
Berlin as a result of the defeat of the Republican party 
in America. Now that they were about to lose the popu- 
lar and hospitable American Minister, the Germans frankly 
showed the esteem in which they held him, and although 
they all felt glad of the success of the anti-protection 
party in the United States, yet they were sorry to lose 
such a cultivated and tactful diplomat as Mr. Phelps. It 
was about this time that Charles Lowe, writing in the 
Cincinnati Tribune of the Ministers who had represented 
America at the German capital, said of Mr. Phelps: 

It may be doubted whether any American Minister in BerUn 
ever enjoyed more of the confidence and intimacy of the official 
world there than Mr. Phelps, whose mansion, however, is none 
the less a meeting ground for the social and intellectual ele- 



His Life and Public Services 263 

ments of distinction which used to form almost the exclusive 
objects of his predecessor's hospitality— a meeting ground 
where the honors are so warmly and gracefully done by Mr. 
Phelps and his cultivated daughter. With his spare and 
slender frame, dark, sparkling eyes, and olive hue, Mr. Phelps 
has more the air of a Romanic tlian of an Anglo-Saxon race. 
But if his appearance is southern, his mental fibre is of the 
north in its sunniest and most inviting aspect, while his 
subtlety is such as could not be surpassed in Spain, 

In January, 1893, Minister Phelps's health being some- 
what affected by the trying climate of Northern Germany, 
he went south on leave of absence. He travelled through 
Spain, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Italy. While he 
was away on this vacation, Governor Werts of New Jer- 
sey appointed him Judge of the Court of Errors and 
Appeals of that State, and when he returned to his post 
in Berlin he closed up all the business of the Legation on 
hand and turned over the Legation to General Runyon, 
his successor, upon the latter's arrival in Berlin. In his 
last report to the Secretary of State at Washington, Mr. 
Phelps wrote : 

And as I now relinquish the charge of it, I want to call the 
attention of the Secretary further to the fact that the business 
of the Legation up to date is completed, every paper on file 
and every record made, so that the secretaries, the clerks, and 
the messengers stand ready to give their undivided attention to 
any new business which may be submitted by their new chief. 
I make this statement with the less reserve, because it suggests 
the propriety of my saying a word about the staff of the Lega- 
tion to whose credit this condition of affairs is almost entirely 
due. All connected with the Legation have had long experi- 
ence, and used the fruits of it with zeal and fidelity for the 
public service. 

Thus Mr. Phelps left Germany, where he had spent four 
of the most fruitful and happy years of his busy life in 



264 William Walter Phelps 

the service of his country. His achievements in those 
years had attracted the attention of the world and had 
brought distinction to himself and credit and advantage 
to his country. He was happy in the satisfaction that 
attended his labors, and happy in the warm and lasting 
friendships he had made with many of the greatest men 
of his day. He was almost as popular in Germany as in 
America. His high purpose and his sterling integrity in- 
spired the highest esteem and secured the confidence and 
affection of the Germans, who could fully appreciate those 
qualities of heart and mind, while his intellectual accom- 
plishments and his ability as a man of affairs won their 
admiration. 

When Mr. Phelps returned from Germany, he sought 
his own estate and again became a real Jerseyman. He 
was welcomed home by his political friends, among whom 
were most of the eminent party leaders of the State. They 
had a hope and expectation that he would again actively 
enter into political movements and become a candidate 
for United States Senator; but he no longer had the am- 
bition that had formerly inspired him and he would not 
seek a seat in the Upper House of Congress. 

When he arrived, he expressed the greatest delight to 
get back to his New Jersey home, and he was pleased 
with the words of praise with which nearly every news- 
paper in the country greeted him. Plans were formed 
for bringing him to the front for further political honors, 
but his health and his inclinations prompted him to retire 
from an honored public life and enjoy quietly a position 
on the bench of the highest court in the State, to which 
he had been appointed by the Democratic Governor, Mr. 
Werts. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

Reasons for His Appointment to the Bench — His Commission — Return to 
New Jersey — Tells of His Parting Interview with the Clerman Em- 
peror — Sworn in as Judge of the New Jersey Court of Errors and 
Appeals — An Impressive Ceremony 

THE appointment of Mr. Phelps to the bench and his 
acceptance amazed the politicians of all parties, 
puzzled the newspapers, and surprised the general public. 
The reasons given at the time for the choice made by the 
Governor differed very widely, and were largely without 
substantial foundation. The political discreditors of Mr. 
Phelps originated the absurd report that the appoint- 
ment was the forerunner and an inducement for a change 
of political faith on the part of the recipient of that honor, 
but, although this rumor received wide circulation, it soon 
perished for lack of substance. 

The facts, however, were that a previous Democratic 
governor of New Jersey had made it a rule to ap- 
point no Republicans to judgeships of any kind, with 
the result that the bench of the State became filled 
with Democrats, who were in many instances most in- 
tense partisans. This practice was vigorously denounced 
by the Republicans and began to meet the disapproval 
of fair-minded Democrats. Governor Werts, himself a 
lawyer of high standing, was desirous of raising the tone 
of the court of last resort and of preventing politics in- 
fluencing its decisions. A vacancy having occurred in 
the Court of Errors and Appeals, he determined to 
signalize a departure from the policy of his immediate 

265 



266 William Walter Phelps 

predecessors by the appointment to the vacant seat of 
some Republican lawyer of unmistakable talent, whose 
whole qualification for the position would be beyond 
any cavil. He respected and admired Mr, Phelps, with 
whom he had a personal acquaintance, and knowing that 
the popular diplomat was soon to return to his home, 
the Governor tendered him the office. 

This offer came to Mr. Phelps when he had had his fill 
of partisan strife and its rewards. He felt no craving for 
further political honors. During all his diverse and suc- 
cessful career he ever had a longing to get back into the 
realm of the law, which, in his early manhood, circum- 
stances compelled him to leave. The law and its study, 
with its problems, axioms, intricacies, certainties and un- 
certainties, its application and decisions, all had for him 
a constant and enduring attraction. The offer of the 
judgeship reached Minister Phelps at Berlin at a timely 
moment and a reply of acceptance immediately followed, 
for his ambitions were always pure and such as led to 
valuable service to his countrymen. 

There were rabid Democratic politicians in the State 
who, favoring the old strictly partisan methods, predicted 
that the Senate, in which there was a large Democratic 
majority, would not confirm the appointment, but when 
the matter came before that body in February, confirma- 
tion ensued without the slightest opposition. The Secre- 
tary of State then forwarded to Mr. Phelps the following 
notification: 

Tkenton, N. J., March 4, 1S93. 

My dear Judge: 

It gives me great pleasure to hand you herewith your com- 
mission as a Judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals of this 
State; and permit me at the same time to congratulate you, 
as the State also is to be congratulated, upon your appoint- 
ment. Of course I very well know that it is a little premature 
to address you by your forthcoming title, although the records 
of this Department are complete on that point, except as to 



His Life and Public Services 267 

the matter of your official oath. I trust and believe you may 
find the position a most congenial and agreeable one. Your 
term of office begins on the i8th instant. 

Sincerely yours, 

Henry C. Kelsey. 
To Hon. William Walter Phelps, 
Berlin. 

The commission which was enclosed read : 

The State of New Jersey 

To William Walter Phelps, Esquire, Greeting: 

Reposing special trust and confidence in your integrity, pru- 
dence and ability, I have, by and with the advice and consent 
of the Senate, appointed you, the said William Walter Phelps, 
to be a judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals in and for 
the State of New Jersey. You, the said William Walter 
Phelps, are therefore by these presents, commissioned to be 
Judge of the Court of Errors and Appeals in and for the said 
State of New Jersey. To have and to hold and enjoy said 
office with all the powers, privileges, fees, perquisites, rights 
and advantages to the same belonging or appertaining for and 
during the legal time. 

In testimony whereof, the Great Seal of the State is hereunto 
affixed. 

IFitness, George T. Werts, Governor of the State of Ne7v 
'yersey, at Trenton, this eighteenth day of March, in the year 
of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, 
and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred 

and seventeenth. 

George T. Werts. 

By the Governor. 

Henry C. Kelsey, 

Secretary of State. 

Mr. Phelps reached New York in the middle of June. 
The inevitable newspaper reporter was on hand to meet 
him, and this is a portion of the interview that followed: 



268 William Weaker Phelps 

" I am just delighted to get home," said Mr. Phelps. " To 
be sure, my experience in Berlin has been extremely agree- 
able. But now I can eschew politics, fortunately. You know, 
there is none, or rather, ought to be none on the bench; so 
when, next Tuesday, I am sworn in as Judge of the Court of 
Errors and Appeals, an office which came to me very unex- 
pectedly from the Democratic Governor of New Jersey, I shall 
retire from politics, at least for the term as Judge. No; all 
my political ambition has been gratified, and there is no office 
— not even a United States Senatorship, as I feel now — that I 
would willingly accept." 

" German newspapers have said you will soon return to 
Berlin and make it your future home." 

" There is no foundation for such a story." 
" What of your farewell reception by the Emperor ? " 
" The Emperor paid the United States a great compliment. 
The Sunday before my departure the Emperor drove in from 
Potsdam, fifteen miles, for the special purpose of receiving 
General Runyon, my successor, and bidding me good-by. In 
parting with me the Emperor, taking me by the hand, said: 
' Come, now, Mr. Phelps, you will agree with me that my sub- 
jects who have emigrated to the United States have proved 
themselves the best citizens there ? ' I replied that I thought 
the native-born Americans made pretty good citizens. I as- 
sured him, however, that the Germans in America were very 
highly appreciated, and were among our best citizens. Then 
the Emperor told me how pleased he was that his sailor boys 
had accjuitted themselves so well during the naval review. He 
appeared to be particularly delighted with the reports that the 
peculiar marching of his soldiers had evoked even more ap- 
plause than did the fine appearance of the Russians and the 
French, He is very proud of the navy as well as of the army. 
He was deeply grateful for the courtesies extended his naval 
representatives here, and desired me to express his gratitude 
to President Cleveland. The Emperor jokingly referred to 
the fact that one of his subjects had succeeded in capturing my 
daughter. He seemed to enjoy my loss far more than I did." 

A regular term of the Court of Errors and Appeals met 



His Life and Public Services 269 

on June 20, 1893. The swearing in of Mr. Phelps as a 
Judge of the court, was expected at that time, and it was 
looked for as an interesting event because so much sig- 
nificance had been attached to the appointment. Conse- 
quently the courtroom was crowded with lawyers, judges, 
ex-judges, and men prominent in politics and public life 
from all over the State. When the newly appointed Judge 
arrived at the Capitol he was warmly greeted by several 
of the heads of the State Departments, who wished to 
show him around the recently enlarged and improved 
building, which he had not seen since its reconstruction. 
At the hour for opening the court, members of the bar 
in attendance appointed a committee to seek Mr. Phelps 
and escort him to the courtroom. In making his way to 
the bench, he had to stop every few steps to shake hands 
with some of the lawyers and officials in the crowded 
room who w^ere old acquaintances. He was approached 
and welcomed by the Chancellor and Chief Justice, who 
introduced him to the other members of the court. 
When the court was called to order, it was announced 
that the first business would be the administration of the 
oath of office to William Walter Phelps as an Associate 
Judge. The bench and bar then arose while Mr. Phelps 
solemnly swore to administer justice without fear or favor, 
and to uphold the Constitution of the United States and 
the State of New Jersey. After signing the oath, Judge 
Phelps took his seat upon the judicial bench in New Jer- 
sey, almost thirty years after he had declined a judgeship 
offered to him by a governor of New York. What an 
eventful life had been his in the meantime! 



CHAPTER XXVII 

Mr. Phelps's Interest in Englewood — Some of the Things He Did for the 
Township — Honored by His Neighbors — A Warm "Welcome 
Home" from Them on His Return from Germany 

AMONG the many events of Mr. Phelps's life, the 
tributes of respect and affection which he received 
from his friends and neighbors at Englewood were per- 
haps to him the most pleasurable. From the first settle- 
ment at Teaneck he considered Englewood his home town 
and never failed to manifest his loyalty to and interest in 
it. It was friends here who assisted him, by offering 
their acres for sale, in acquiring the great estate, the im- 
provement of which contributed so largely to surrounding 
land values. This he referred to happily in a speech at a 
local reception: "Englewood gave me more land than I 
wanted. Indeed, it was rather forced upon me. It hap- 
pened in this wise: My sanguine friends who forced it 
upon me could n't keep it and I could n't get rid of it." 
In those early days when the town had scarcely gradu- 
ated from village life and was innocent of even dreams of 
the growth that was about to set in and develop a beauti- 
ful and properous city, public improvement was very slow ; 
even that private enterprise which is displayed in a regard 
for appearances in home surroundings was awaiting the 
influence of example and incentive. Although an entire 
stranger in the community, except in the few acquaint- 
ances of business channels, Mr. Phelps promptl}- entered 
into the active life of the community, evincing a keen in- 
terest in all its affairs. This sentiment broadened as asso- 

270 



His Life and Public Services 271 

elation with the people developed personal characteristics. 
He rapidly acquired an intimacy with public and private 
needs, and was constant in devising methods to meet 
them individually or offering incentives to others to join 
in acts for the common good. Conspicuous in this re- 
spect was his extensive road-making, referred to else- 
where. 

In 1 891 Mr. Phelps made six different propositions to 
the citizens, to bear a large share of the expense of cer- 
tain improvements. These included a soldiers' monu- 
ment, a new railroad station, a public park, enlargement 
of the National Guard armory, and additional road work. 
There were impediments to carrying out all these pur- 
poses, but this did not check the public spirit or generosity 
of Mr. Phelps. He gave a valuable strip of land to the 
Englewood P^ield Club, in addition to a liberal cash con- 
tribution to the new club-house fund, an incentive which 
assured stability for that semi-public enterprise. This 
stimulus was felt in so many channels for the betterment 
of Englewood and its people that few movements of any 
moment were undertaken or carried through without his 
interest being voluntarily manifested. He was especially 
gratified with the work of the Englewood Improvement 
Association, which carried out many ideas for promoting 
the good of the place. After receiving the report of the 
Association for the year 1891, at Berlin, Mr. Phelps sent 
to its president a note of congratulation and a check. 
His note was in the cordial, informal manner that marked 
so much of his correspondence: 

I have just finished reading your report. You said it so 
nicely, and what you said was so nice, that I want to celebrate 
last year's success of the Association by sending it a thousand 
dollars. Please put the money where it will do most to benefit 
the Englewood we both like so much. 

This money was used to place a clock in the tower of 
the Lyceum, which marks the passing hours and recalls 



272 William Walter Phelps 

to old and new generations him who was so soon to enter 
upon the eternal day that is limitless and uninfluenced by 
Time. 

The failure of the soldiers' monument project was one 
of the few causes of regret to Mr. Phelps. The citizens 
of Englewood rarely evinced a lack of patriotism or regard 
for the memory of the heroic dead; but in this instance 
they failed in appreciation of a proposition that few com- 
munities would have permitted to pass unfulfilled. 

When a noted burglar was caught in the act of robbing 
the Teaneck schoolhouse, and in the desperate encounter 
that ensued nearly killed a young man of the community, 
Mr. Phelps, telegraphing from Washington, promptly 
added one thousand dollars to the reward for the capture 
of the desperado. The burglar, who was severely pun- 
ished in the fight with the young man, was apprehended 
and sent to State prison for a long term. 

An important work, which has resulted in great benefit 
to Englewood, was the Overpeck Canal. A ditch ran 
through a long stretch of land purchased by Mr. Phelps. 
He conceived that a canal could be built here that would 
be a practical utility to the town for commercial purposes, 
especially in the transportation of coal, lumber, and heavy 
freight, by way of the Hackensack River and Overpeck 
Creek. There was somewhat of an engineering problem 
involved, which failed to solve the difficulty, as a sufficient 
depth of water could not be obtained except at an outlay 
far beyond any possible compensating result. So far as 
the work was carried out, however, the canal became of 
great value to Englewood by forming an outlet for a sys- 
tem of surface drainage. In this canal improvement, Mr. 
Phelps was unavoidably involved in a prolonged litigation 
over a mill-right of unknown value until his enterprise 
entered upon the premises. Many hundreds of acres of 
land were reclaimed through the drainage afforded by the 
canal. 

Mr. Phelps was one of the first to see the importance 



His Life and Public Services 273 

of protecting and improving the Palisades, and through 
his efforts much was accomplished in this respect by indi- 
vidual owners of tracts of land before the public movement 
was inaugurated. The future of this wild and rugged 
section, then in the first stages of development into sum- 
mer homes and country seats, was clear to his vision, and 
his love of nature prompted him to urge upon all the 
wisdom of preserving it from the despoilers who more 
recently had to be dislodged at great expense. 

Of the gentlemen most prominent in and near Engle- 
wood at the period of Mr. Phelps's settlement at Teaneck, 
many have passed to their reward; but a few remain, still 
conspicuous in the successful direction of private and 
public enterprises, and laboring for the further advance- 
ment of everything tending to maintain the (now) city in 
its position as an example to all neighbors in whatever 
makes for charity, public spirit, patriotism, and progress. 
In this respect, the city recently received the gift of a 
home for the public library, and through several private 
benefactions and annual public appropriations, a thor- 
oughly equipped free hospital is maintained. When 
stricken with his final illness, Mr. Phelps expressed to 
his family physician a determination to make a special 
provision for this new institution, but the progress of his 
disease, more rapid than was anticipated, prevented the 
consummation of such a purpose. 

The leading men of affairs in and about Englewood 
with whom Mr. Phelps held more or less intimate business 
and social relations during the earlier days included J. 
VVyman Jones, credited with being the "father of Engle- 
wood " ; Daniel Drake Smith, Lebbeus Chapman, Living- 
ston K. Miller, David Hoadley, Washington R. Vermilye, 
Frank B. Nichols, General T. B, Van Buren, Sheppard 
Romans, I. Smith Homans, Colonel H. W. Banks, Jeffrey 
A. Humphrey, William A. Booth, James Otis Morse, 
Wm. H. De Ronde, Wm. P. Coe, Colonel William M. 

Grosvenor, General Samuel A. Duncan, and Donald 
18 



2 74 William Walter Phelps 

Mackay. These and others, regardless of political affilia- 
tions, were always ready to manifest their appreciation 
of the neighbor who had won such distinctive honors at 
home and abroad. 

In October, 1890, Mr. Phelps and his family were ten- 
dered a reception at the Englewood Club. As ladies and 
gentlemen were included in the membership, it was a large 
family organization, embracing the leading citizens, and 
the reception assumed the proportions of a neighborhood 
demonstration of appreciation. The sincerity, unanimity, 
and spontaneity that were the actuating influences 
prompting this gathering, received frank expression by 
the president of the club, Mr. Sheppard Romans, in 
brief words of welcome : 

Ladies and gentlemen: 

We are met this evening to welcome our distinguished 
fellow-citizen, the Hon. William Walter Phelps, American 
Minister to Germany, who is spending a brief vacation among 
us. We meet to do honor, not to the statesman and diplo- 
matist, but to our friend and neighbor, in whose growing 
reputation we take a just pride and i)leasure. We know that 
amidst the splendors of the German court, amidst the mo- 
mentous issues in which he is taking such a conspicuous part, 
there is a warm corner in his heart for those amongst whom 
he dwelt for so many years, and we know that our welcome is 
grateful to him. 

Mr. Phelps, allow me, in the name of the members of the 
Englewood Club, to extend to you our hearty greetings, and 
to wish that you and yours may enjoy many years of health 
and happiness. 

The reply of Mr. Phelps, following an enthusiastic 
demonstration by the company, was as follows: 

I thank you, Mr. Homans, for your kind welcome. You 
are right; I did not forget my friends and never shall. This 
was, and is, and ever will be, my home. I should love to 



His Life and Public Services 275 

speak of its past, its present, and its future, but I am aware 
that any speech making on this social occasion would be out 
of place, and 1 shall say but a word. I want especially to 
make it plain by my own declaration that I highly appreciate 
the honor the Englewood Club has done me, and in my name 
and Mrs. Phelps's to thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, for 
the pleasure you are giving us. 

I knew before this that the occasion was without political 
coloring, and I recognized with greatest satisfaction that on 
the committee of arrangements were the names of two distin- 
guished leaders of the political party I have so long and 
vigorously fought. However bad I may be as a politician, 
they welcome me as a neighbor and a friend. It is an especial 
compliment. If this and other flattering circumstances of this 
evening are calculated to foster an excessive pride in me, I 
shall be saved by this consideration: for twenty-four years, 
first with the ardor of youth, afterwards with the strength of 
manhood, I struggled to make Englewood grow. I was called 
away, and now I return to find that Englewood has grown 
more in all directions during my one year of absence than in 
my ten years of presence. May this growth continue, whoever 
comes or goes, and may Englewood give to new thousands the 
peaceful, happy lives that it has given to us and to our 
children. 

It was three years later, when Mr. Phelps had finally 
returned from his mission abroad, that his friends and 
neighbors of Englewood, ignoring party lines, resolved 
to give him such a "Welcome Home" as would make 
the occasion memorable. The returned diplomat, since 
arrival, had declined many invitations from business, 
political, and social bodies desirous of displaying apprecia- 
tion of his distinguished public services at home and 
abroad and their respect for his personal worth ; but he 
said that this was an invitation which no Englewood man 
could decline. His only hope was "that this occasion 
may be kept strictly as a neighborhood gathering, and 
that I may not be considered as thinking that I have any 



276 William Walter Phelps 

claim to the honor you now do me, except that I have 
been away from home a long time and am eager to meet 
again my friends and neighbors." 

The committee complied with the guest's wish and still 
had a company of more than five-score gentlemen, includ- 
ing many names notable in business, religion, literature, 
and art. In an assemblage of such diversified talents 
there were naturally speakers who contributed the varied 
elements of instruction and entertainment, and they 
made the "welcome" remarkable in local annals. Mr. 
Phelps was himself in one of his most felicitous moods, 
largely reminiscent, as the occasion suggested. In his 
catalogue of credits due to Englewood for what it had 
given to him, including a home, health, and public spirit, 
Mr. Phelps caused much amusement by recalling the early 
means of railroad transportation to and from the city, 
which he did in this manner: 

It gave me friends. There is no time for such things in 
town. And friendships that last long take time to grow. 
Here we pioneers found abundant time and opportunity. 
Modern Englewood life still gives great opportunities; but 
nothing like the one train which took us all to town in the 
morning and brought us back at night; the morning exchange 
which met twice daily and "cleared" the business of the town. 
No one will forget its start, which never occurred until 'Squire 
Miller at the corner had waved and smiled his good-bye; nor 
its return, which never occurred until the conductor was as- 
sured that all his passengers had found it, so haphazard was its 
position outside the Jersey City station, and always shifting 
between freight cars and coal cars. 

Mr. Phelps paid tribute to the fealty of Englewood 
politically, a town with natural Democratic leanings that 
generally followed its leanings at the polls : 

And yet, if the clouds were gathering thick against their 
young townsman, in some way or another the weary wire on 



His Life and Public Services 277 

election nights would announce such a majority in favor of one 
Republican candidate as to make my election sure. 

The debit side of his relationship to Englewood was 
touched upon with equal happiness in his reference to 
the acquirement of land, and in this way: 

Sometimes I meet a man who asks me for the loose stones 
on a Palisade lot; I yield, and soon afterwards I learn that he 
has started a quarry. Again, I tell some poor man he can 
have the dead wood on some wood lot; the next time I drive 
that way, I discover that he has cleared the field and is 
ploughing. 

Englewood was especially generous in its support of 
athletics, and the rivalry between its Field Club base-ball 
players and those of the Oritani Field Club at Hacken- 
sack was thus introduced by Mr. Phelps, a trivial inci- 
dent, but of so popular a nature that it was received with 
the enthusiastic demonstration always accorded the victors 
in manly sports : 

I grumble some against Englewood, and worst about my 
Teaneck roads. I take great pride in keeping them smooth 
for my pleasure in driving and that of my friends. To do that 
I have to strenuously ward off all loaded teams. The tempta- 
tion naturally is for all such to make short cuts, at times when 
they think they won't be caught. And when I do catch them 
the interview is never a pleasant one. Then I make the 
heaviest charge against Englewood for wear of temper. Why, 
only last Tuesday, the Fourth of July, as all Englewood was 
in Hackensack, I thought I could have a quiet drive as an old 
man, with an old horse, on his old farm would like to have. 
Lost in pleasant contemplation, I turned a bosky thicket to 
discover in flagrante delicto, the heaviest of express wagons 
laden with a score of heaviest fellows. Could there have been 
a more troubled moment? I saw at a glance the situation. 
It was our victorious ball club, flushed with victory and think- 
ing at the moment that the world belonged to them. Should 



278 William Walter Phelps 

I check their hilarity? If I did not, where were discipline 
and order and the doctrine of trespass, which both as a land- 
owner and Judge I was to enforce? The moment of decision 
was painful to both parties, as we viewed each other, and while 
hesitating I was lost. 

Your captain was master of the situation. In a second he 
was on the driver's seat, his men were on their feet, and he 
waved his flag in wild enthusiasm as he ordered, " Three 
cheers for William Walter Phelps." It was a knock-down for 
me. The loaded team rattled off to Englewood, rutting a 
score of pretty road-beds, and I dropped into one of my 
densest groves and drove slowly home, as Napoleon drove 
from the field of Waterloo. 

And that was n't very bad, for it was the Fourth of July, 
and it was to celebrate an Englewood victory. And so are all 
the grudges I have against Englewood; each so small, so in- 
significant, that, like Rip's drink, it does n't count. 

Departing from local topics for a few moments, the 
guest of the evening said : 

Perhaps I can divert the stream of reporters from Teaneck, 
who come like flies, notebook in hand, to know what this going 
out of politics means, if I tell you, who did so much toward 
keeping me in, that it means that after thirty years of active 
practical political life, and that includes attending caucuses, 
suggesting some candidates, suppressing others, attending 
primaries, stumping all October, attending conventions, local, 
State, and national, I think I have done my duty and am en- 
titled to a rest. And were I not thus discharged by completion 
of a pretty good round term of political service, I should feel 
that I was debarred from partisanship, offensive or otherwise, 
when I became a judge. 

I entertain an old-fashioned idea on the subject of the 
judiciary, and think that a judge ought to so conduct himself 
as to ins])ire his fellow citizens with such an idea of impartiality 
that Republican or Democratic suitor would have no fear of 
bias against himself in any political question that might be 
brought before this court. 



His Life and Public Services 279 

Somewhat similar was the feeling 1 had, that, when I was a 
foreign Minister and representing the American people as a 
whole, I ought not to give my time and my efforts to advancing 
the interests of a i)art of them, however much my political 
sympathies were with that party. It was different when I was 
a representative in Congress; I was sent there to advocate a 
certain class of political opinions. 

The voters in the district at the polls decided that these 
were the opinions they wanted, and unless the man who was 
elected by them represented these opinions there could be no 
government by a majority and consequently no government by 
the people. 

Happy speeches followed by the leading guests, and 
Mr. Herbert Turner, one of the speakers, commended the 
career of Mr. Phelps to the attention of young men as an 
example of the gentleman and scholar in politics. He 
said that the young men of the country would find in the 
illustrious career of our former Minister to Germany an 
example well worthy of imitation. 

One of the incidents of the evening that was very 
pleasing to Mr. Phelps was the delivery to him during 
the festivities of a telegram of congratulations from his 
daughter in Berlin, Marian von Rottenburg-Phelps. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Yale Makes Him a Doctor of Laws — His Continuous and Important Work 
for that University — His Many other Benefactions to His Alma 
Mater — Leader of the "Young Vale" Movement — The Charter 
Amended — He is Elected a Fellow and Serves on the Board for 
Twenty Years 

OX going through his mail one morning, at the lega- 
tion in Berlin, Minister Phelps opened a modest 
little envelope, which promised nothing unusual, but, as 
he read the letter, the diplomat leaned back in his chair 
and a flush mantled his cheek. The remainder of the 
morning's mail was forgotten and, for the moment, all 
else passed from his mind, as he absently fingered the 
little missive, while his memory was busy with the scenes 
of his youth at old Yale. Thirty years had intervened, 
years of absorbing struggle and manifold success in the 
law. in finance, in statecraft, and in diplomacy, the fruit- 
bearing years of a man's life devoted to duty and his 
country, but these scenes of brilliant achievement in the 
arena of the world's work did not obscure the memory of 
those earlier days spent at his loved Alma Mater. 

There he again saw himself a happy and care-free 
youth, resting under the shade of the Elms, with his 
companions; in the recitation room, easily sustaining his 
own part and secretly causing harmless mirth at the ec- 
centricities of the professors or his classmates; in the 
debating club, and through all the varied life at a great 
college, dreaming of the future, with high aspiration and 
half-conceived purposes, all the time forming friendships 

2S0 



His Life and Public Services 281 

which endured through life, and imbibing a love for the 
old place second only to family ties. 

These were the scenes recalled by the letter in his hand, 
which informed him that Yale had crowned him with one 
of her most coveted laurels and that he was now a Doctor 
of Laws — a reward for his brilliant achievements and his 
successful services to his country. It read: 

Yale University, 
New Haven, Conn., July 3, 1890. 

My dear Mr, Phelps: 

It is my duty to send you a formal notice of the action taken 
by the President and Fellows, at the recent public commence- 
ment, in conferring upon you the honorary degree of Doctor 
of Laws. 

The corporation were glad to avail themselves of such an 
opportunity to testify their appreciation, not merely of your 
general public hfe and influence; but specially of those recent 
diplomatic services, which have deserved and received the 
distinguished approval of the whole nation. 

The diploma certifying to this act I have ventured to retain, 
as the President's signature is wanting, and perhaps it will be 
safer to postpone its delivery until your return. 

Very faithfully yours, 

Franklin B. Dexter, 
Secretary, 
Hon. Wm. Walter Phelps, LL.D. 

This recognition was very gratifying to Mr. Phelps, 
though not merely as a reward for his public services. 
To him it was the complete and final indorsement by his 
Alma Mater of his labors on her behalf— labors that were 
not at all times accepted in the spirit in which they were 
offered. 

Yet, though his judgment was sometimes questioned, 
the motive that prompted him could never be doubted. 
To the natural pride every man has in his own college, 
his interest in Yale became increased by the trust reposed 
in him by his father on behalf of the institution and by 



282 William Walter Phelps 

his marriage with the daughter of one of its great bene- 
factors. Needless, then, to say that at all times' and in 
all places, Yale held a warm place in his heart. 

While he was at the German Court, Mr. Armstrong, 'a 
brother of General Armstrong of Hampton, Va., fame, 
came there clothed with considerable dignity as an am- 
bassador from the then Hawaiian Court on some official 
business. At a fixed time, with much ceremony and the 
usual diplomatic etiquette, he was introduced to the resi- 
dent foreign plenipotentiaries. Watching his opportunit}-, 
the American Minister drew Mr. Armstrong aside into an 
adjoining room, saying: 

"We 've had enough of this conventionalism and non- 
sense. Let 's talk about good old days at Yale." 

They had been students at Yale at the same time. 

Just one other incident of a different kind may be cited 
here to illustrate his active interest in the old college and 
to show that his exertions could always be depended 
upon when Yale was in need of money. It also shows 
how powerful his influence was when he chose to put it 
forth. The story is obtained from a classmate who now 
occupies a distinguished position : 

It was in the sixties. I was calling upon him at his office in 
Exchange Place. He said to me; 

"I wish you had come in earlier. Professor Thacher has 
just been here — came with his bag, evidently expecting to stay 
two or three days in New York, trying to raise some money — 
wants $10,000 to meet some emergencies. I told him that I 
would attend to it, and that he might go back to New Haven 
this afternoon, confident of having it. As soon as he left the 
office I went to Dodge, to Chittenden and two or three others. 
We made up the money and then I stopped on my way back 
at the office of the Ktwni/i^ Post, and gave them the item: 
' Professor Thacher came to New York this morning to raise a 
considerable sum for Yale, expecting to spend several days in 
doing it, but the amount retjuired was raised so quickly that 
tlie Professor returned to New Haven this afternoon.' " 



His Life and Public Services 283 

Mr. Phelps, in further conversation with me, while his eyes 
showed their wonted sparkle, remarked: 

"Won't Thacher be surprised to see that item when he 
takes up his Post to read in the cars on his way home! He 
will wonder how the Post ever got track of his movements." 

In many ways, all of which have not been made public, 
Yale was financially benefited by the generosity or friendly 
interest and exertions of Mr. Phelps. In 1880, he donated 
to the college 212 volumes (of which 69 were folios) re- 
lating chiefly to the history of Great Britain. The ma- 
jority of these works or the editions were new to the Yale 
library, and were consequently the more valuable. 

In 1889, he gave to the Yale gymnasium fund $1000. 

At the commencement, in 1892, contributions were an- 
nounced from Mr. Phelps, as follows: $5000 for the new 
scientific school building, $3000 to the university library, 
and $1000 to the medical school fund. 

In the fall of the same year, he bore the expense of 
uniforming the Yale Republicans. Before he knew any- 
thing of this movement, the young Republicans at Yale 
had organized eight hundred strong and adopted the name 
of the "Phelps Battalion." Mr. Phelps was in Berlin at 
the time, but when he was notified of the action of the 
Yale men, he instantly cabled : 

Berlin, Oct. 8, 1892. 
James F. Burke, New York City. 

I claim the honor of uniforming Yale Republicans. Have 
sent check for entire amount necessary. 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 

Twelve hundred students turned out in the Phelps 
Battalion that year, and it was said at the time that never 
before had there been such political enthusiasm among 
Yale men as was displayed on the night when Chauncey 
M. Depew addressed them after being escorted through 
the streets by the Phelps Battalion. 



284 William Walter Phelps 

For about twenty-five years Mr, Phelps paid to the 
college, usually to the library fund, a yearly sum 
amounting to about S3000. This was the income of a 
trust fund of $50,000 bequeathed by the will of John Jay 
Phelps to his son, in trust, to use the annual income of 
the same for the interest and advantage of Yale College 
in such a manner as the son should deem best, during his 
natural life ; and upon the son's death, the $50,000 should 
be paid to the college for what use or purpose the son 
should direct. 

When Judge Phelps died he added in his will, to the 
bequest of his father, an additional $50,000, directing 
that the sum of these gifts should be devoted to building 
a memorial gateway and building at Yale. This direction 
was executed as speedily as possible. The executors of 
the will and the corporation of the university readily 
came to an understanding and it was decided to erect a 
Memorial Gateway and Recitation Hall on College Street, 
as recitation and lecture rooms were at that time one of 
the greatest needs of the institution. The executors 
designated Mr. C. C. Haight as the architect, he having 
designed the Vandcrbilt hall. Mr. Haight produced a 
plan of an imposing structure and, although its cost was 
estimated at over $100,000, it was adopted, the Phelps 
family making up the extra amount. 

The Phelps Memorial forms the main entrance to the 
campus and completes the quadrangle which Yale men 
had long desired. It stands between Lawrence and 
Welch halls. It is in the collegiate gothic style and in 
design is a tower flanked by four octagonal turrets, with 
an elevation from the ground level to the top of the 
parapet of about one hundred feet. In the centre there 
is a lofty arch sixteen feet wide leading from College 
Street, making the principal entrance to the campus. 
The monotony of the line of buildings on that side of the 
quadrangle is relieved by the Phelps building, which pro- 
jects fourteen feet east and west beyond the walls of the 



His Life and Public Services 285 

former, while the massive tower rising above the roofs of 
the Welch and Lawrence, and projecting boldly in ad- 
vance of them, serves admirably to unite their somewhat 
different styles of architecture. It is built of brown- 
stone, and its interior is very substantial— the walls of 
masonry, the floors of iron and cement, the staircases of 
cast and wrought iron, with marble treads. Above the 
archway, which is 20 feet high, are four floors containing 
fourteen classrooms and also rooms for the Classical Club 
of Yale. It was the first building at Yale to be fitted 
with an elevator. 

The interest of Mr. Phelps in the welfare of Yale was 
too deep and abiding to restrict his activity to gifts. He 
was always on the alert to do things that would be bene- 
ficial to it and to exploit its worth and advantages. He 
was too clear-headed to be blinded by his enthusiasm. 
He saw what was being done at other colleges and de- 
sired Yale to forge ahead. His pride in his Alma Mater 
caused him to yearn for her pre-eminence as an institution 
of learning. He found others, as loyal as he, who agreed 
with him, and there grew up among the younger Yale 
alumni a strong sentiment for a change in the government 
of the college. As it crystallized it became known as the 
"Young Yale" movement, and if Mr. Phelps was not the 
actual originator, he was the foremost leader of the move- 
ment. On him devolved the labor of pushing the move- 
ment, *bn him fell the responsibility and the criticism, and 
to him was due the credit of carrying the agitation to a 
successful consummation. 

By a charter granted by the Connecticut legislature in 
1745 the government of Yale College was constituted of 
the president and ten Congregationalist clerg}'men who 
called themselves "Fellows," and this continued until 
1792, when, in consideration of certain grants from the 
State, the corporation voted that the governor, lieutenant- 
governor, and six senior assistants in Council of State 
should become Fellows, making a corporation of eighteen, 



286 William Walter Phelps 

besides the president. They had control of all depart- 
ments of the college. In 1819, on the adoption of the 
new constitution, the six senior senators were substituted 
for six senior assistants. The State senators gave but 
little attention to the duties of this honorary office and 
the whole government practically was, as before, in the 
hands of the ministers, who filled all vacancies at their 
will, electing their successors, and consequently the gov- 
ernment was a self-perpetuating body. 

For a number of years there had been a great deal 
of criticism of the management, especially among the 
younger alumni, whose interest in the college was yet 
fresh and active. This sentiment, however, had found 
no formal expression until it was voiced by Mr. Phelps, 
around whom had rallied all those who believed that new 
blood should be introduced into the management to give 
the college new life, a wider field of operation, and a 
more progressive spirit. It was at an alumni meeting at 
the commencement of 1870, when the Young Yale move- 
ment took the open field. The older alumni had been 
discussing the desirability of a change in the constitution, 
and they had to confess that they could not agree upon 
any recommendation. They unanimously approved the 
general policy of the college, its discipline and curriculum, 
and the management of its funds. Speeches were made 
by the president. Governor Hawley, Professors Trow- 
bridge, Weir, and others. When they had done, there 
was a loud and imperative call from the younger of the 
alumni for William Walter Phelps of the class of i860. 
Mr. Phelps responded with a speech that inaugurated the 
reform and caused a breeze of surprise among the staid 
old members of the corporation. He said : 

What I desire to say to you is the message of Young Yale 
to Old Yale — it is what the graduates of the last fifteen years 
think and say to each other, what they have not yet had oppor- 
tunity and courage to say to you. Doubtful with the becom- 
ing modesty of youth, taught to believe that old men were for 



His Life and Public Services 287 

counsel, we have gathered for many a year in pilgrimage to 
this literary Mecca, and have held our peace. Now that we 
gather here, full grown men, who, outside in other spheres, are 
doing the heavy work and shouldering the highest responsi- 
bilities, it would be a false modesty that should refuse to give 
utterance in public and at the college altar to what is said 
abroad. 

The younger alumni are not satisfied with the management 
of the college. They do not think that in anything except 
scholarship it keeps progress with the age. They find no fault 
with the men; they find much fault with the spirit of the 
management. It is too conservative and narrow. Our youth- 
ful admiration and love for president and professors burn with 
a greater warmth now that we can recognize their superiority 
to ordinary men. What the fiery Spaniard said to Lincoln — 
" Humblest of the humble before his own soul; greatest of the 
great before the world," — we claim for our president. What 
no pen records, except that which tells of the highest moral 
and intellectual gifts unselfishly devoted to the cause of edu- 
cation, do we claim for Porter, Hadley, Thacher, and their 
noble associates. What man can do, they do. 

But they cannot do everything. The college wants a living 
connection with the world without — an infusion of some of the 
new blood that throbs in every vein of this mighty republic — 
a knowledge of what is wanted in the scenes for which Yale 
educates her children; this living connection with the outer 
world, this knowledge of the people's wants, can be acquired 
only from those who are in the people and of the people. 

This great want can be supplied only by the alumni. Put 
them into your government; get them from some other State 
than Connecticut, from some other profession than the min- 
istry. Call them, and they will gladly and eagerly come. Call 
them, and with the reform will pass away every appearance of 
alumni coldness and indifference. Men love that for which 
they scheme and toil. Selfishness — "an enlightened selfish- 
ness," like Mayor Gunther's patriotism — will make them push 
an institution, whose success is their own encomium. Let her 
thousand alumni from Maine to California be Yale College — 
and the bounding blood of youth will throb in every one of its 



288 William Walter Phelps 

ancient members. Believe me, men — who sit on the Supreme 
Bench, who control the Cabinet of the Executive, who, in all 
moral and intellectual reforms, are the leaders of their country- 
men — Yale men, who got their training here, are as able to 
manage its affairs as the Rev. Mr. Pickering of Squashville, 
who is e.xhausted with keeping a few sheep in the wilderness, 
or the Hon. Mr. Domuch of Oldport, who seeks to annul the 
charter of the only railway that benefits his constituents. 

Young Yale asks more — that that worldliness which is not 
inconsistent with godliness, which is an absolute condition of 
earthly success; that tact, that recognition of human weakness 
and infirmity to which all successful men cater, and which 
gives one Yalensian the largest and richest church in the 
metropolis; which makes another the first law officer of a late 
administration, shall not forever, by its absence, check Yale's 
growth. Don't let Harvard, our great rival, alone have the 
benefit of it. Let Yale condescend to be worldly wise. 

The son of a president is " a young gentleman about to 
enter college." Yale says, " It is folly to secure him." Mr. 
Porson thinks other young men will more quickly recognize 
the force of "Aga." "We will make no effort to secure 
him," and saintly Yale folds her arms in the dignity of saintli- 
ness, and young Vicksburg goes to Harvard. The press, in 
a telegram, carries the fact to hamlet and prairie, and the 
fame of Harvard enters a thousand households for the first 
time. 

Again, Yale says: " Learning, not festivity, is the true object 
of a college. We will not cater to the weakness of alumni by 
offering other attractions than the philosophical orations of its 
graduating class." Five hundred Valensians, needing a very 
little impetus to gather them under the old trees, find nothing, 
and stay away. Five hundred Harvard men, needing the same 
impulse, pack their portmanteaus and go to Cambridge, be- 
cause Lord Lackland and the Hon. Mr. Blower, the distin- 
guished Senator from Alaska, will be on the platform. 

Harvard takes great poets and historians to fill its vacant 
professorships; Yale takes boys, who have proved their quali- 
fications by getting their windows broken, as tutors. Gentle- 
men, members of the Board of Trustees, fill better the duties 



His Life and Public Services 289 

of your priceless legacy. By the memories of Killingworth and 
Branford and Saybrook, by a glorious and historic past, don't, 
from a false dignity, let slip the future. Let in the young 
blood that warms the outer world — put in some alumni, and let 
that spirit of growth and progress that makes the Yalensian 
everywhere successful, be the baptism of Yale itself. 

Mr. Phelps's speech caused great excitement and 
elicited constant applause. At its close, the meeting 
broke up, and Young Yale gathering outside the Alumni 
Hall cheered and congratulated Mr. Phelps, while repre- 
sentative men of the last fifteen years exclaimed that their 
class stood by what he had said, and that the ice was at 
last broken. 

Mr. Phelps, in fact, made the speech of the whole com- 
mencement ; he expressed the wishes and aims of the 
younger alumni, who take a lively interest in the future 
of Yale, and who have been too long excluded from its 
management. His speech went to the hearts of this large 
and important class, and, as many said, "broke the ice" 
for them. 

The movement thus intrepidly launched met with a 
storm of opposition, ably led by Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, 
who cleverly responded to the role of "Rev. Timothy 
Pickering of Squashville." The agitation was carried on 
vigorously, undaunted by the opposition it encountered. 
The discussion cropped out at every meeting of Yale men 
and was continued with some acerbity in newspapers and 
periodicals. Naturally Mr. Phelps was frequently mis- 
quoted both by friend and foe and the public letters of 
Dr. Bacon were trenchant and biting in their sarcasm of 
the young reformers. Nevertheless, Young Yale halted 
not, but was rather spurred on to greater efforts to ac- 
complish their object. Mr. Phelps with his great execu- 
tive ability and powerful influence rallied support in the 
next State legislature, which amended the charter. It 
was done with such haste, however, that it was found 

»9 



290 William Walter Phelps 

necessary to make a further amendment in the following 
legislature. 

It may be stated here that Dr. Bacon and Mr. Phelps 
afterwards became united on another issue when the 
learned clergyman published an open letter to Mr. Phelps 
which attracted much attention, discussing the currency 
question and commending Mr. Phelps's position thereon. 
It should also be mentioned that even in the heat of the 
Young Yale struggle Mr. Phelps tried to keep his true 
attitude clearly before his colleagues and fellow-alumni. 
With this purpose he wrote a letter from Germany to the 
Rev. Mr. Jos. Twichell, who reeid it at the commence- 
ment dinner of the alumni in 1871. He said: 

You will remember that I made last Commencement an 
after-dinner speech, which afterwards became the text for dis- 
cussion in the daily, weekly, and quarterly press. In this dis- 
cussion what I said and wished has, as you know, been greatly 
misrepresented; but I have been silent, believing that the 
individual is nothing, the cause everything, and finding all 
needed encouragement in its rapid growth and progress. 

It is a great disappointment to me that I cannot be with you 
now; for after a year's silence I think I might justly claim a 
right to vindicate myself, at least within the walls of Alumni 
Hall, against the various charges made or insinuated against 
me, namely: 

That I despised the Christian ministry, and wished to drive 
its members from the corporation ; 

That I had personal antipathy against certain members of 
the corporation and faculty, and held them up to ridicule; 

That I censured and found fault with the management of 
the College funds; 

That I did not know what I wanted, etc. 

These were the main charges, and to them I plead " Not 
guilty." 

I believe the minister's profession is the highest calling of 
man, and that, as a class, those who follow it are the best of men. 

I believe that religion itself is the supreme and only good in 



His Life and Public Services 291 

this life, and I would rather that Yale College should cease to 
exist than exist under a spirit hostile to Christianity. But I 
do not think it inconsistent with this respect for religion and 
its teachers that I should believe: 

That there are men not in the pulpit who love Christianity; 

That there are men not in the pulpit who love ability and 
learning; 

That there are men not in the pulpit who, by reason of a 
wider experience, have the pre-eminence in other branches 
which the clergyman has in theology. 

I sincerely regret that my remarks of last year were supposed 
to have any personal bearing, for I certainly had no intention 
to reflect upon any individual, and was no less surprised than 
grieved that any one should have so misconstrued them. 

I have never alluded to the financial management of the col- 
lege; I have not the slightest doubt, however, that its money 
has been kept with scrupulous honesty, and without what is 
popularly called " loss," and yet I think it might be shown, if 
necessary, that if the funds had been managed by men trained 
to finance, the curators would have more to boast of than that 
they had simply kept the talent entrusted to them. 

There were many who pretended to doubt what young Yale 
wanted. This pretence has recently been dropped, and her 
cry is so loud and distinct that no one now misunderstands it. 
Her alumni, scattered throughout the Union, ask that Yale 
shall not be governed solely by clergymen, however worthy, 
of a single denomination in a single State. They ask that some 
of their number from other States and other professions shall 
be placed where they may give counsel and participate in the 
control. 

To give the alumni a representation is the only method to 
attract their interest and aid, and to hold the college in the 
proved pre-eminence it has occupied for a century. 

Remember me to all the Fellows, my friends, whether they 
inquire after me or not, and accept my earnest wishes that the 
alumni festival may be bright and cheerful, with lasting good 
for old Yale. Ever sincerely yours, 

Wm. Walter Phelps. 
KissiNGEN, Germany, June 26th, 1871. 



292 William Walter Phelps 

The amended charter constituted the corporation of 
the President and eighteen Fellows: ten representing by 
succession the founders and original trustees of the insti- 
tution ; the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor represent- 
ing the State of Connecticut ; and six representing the 
graduates from all departments of the university, elected 
by alumni of not less than five years' standing, one of the 
six going out every year, but eligible for re-election. 

The first election under the new charter took place in 
1872, and naturally Mr. Phelps was made a candidate by 
his supporters in the reform movement. The most dis- 
tinguished Yale men in the country were also put in the 
field as candidates for the si.x new places. A vigorous 
canvass was conducted among the electorate all over the 
country and the factional disputes which marked the re- 
form agitation were carried into this campaign. Mr. 
Phelps, however, was elected one of the six by a heavy 
vote, his associates all being men of distinction. 

Mr. Phelps was re-elected successively without oppo- 
sition and served the Yale corporation as trustee with 
earnestness and ability until 1886. WHicn his term was 
about to expire that year, several aspirants for the honor 
entered the field. Mr. Phelps was indifferent about re- 
election, and only consented to be regarded as a candidate 
after persistent urging by his friends, some of these being 
the most prominent men in the college. During this 
period of indifference and inaction on his part, one of the 
candidates made assiduous efforts to further his own elec- 
tion and he became an aggressive opponent to Mr. Phelps, 
whose friends and hundreds of the alumni who appreciated 
his services then began to make a somewhat vigorous can- 
vass. All the tactics that could be decently used in such 
a contest were employed against Mr. Phelps, and the 
Yale reform contest, not yet quite forgiven by all of the 
old Yale adherents, doubtless contributed some aid to 
the opposition. The contest received a good deal of 
attention from the newspapers throughout the country. 



His Life and Public Services 293 

In an interview in the New York Tribune, Chauncey M. 
Depew, then president of the New York Alumni Associa- 
tion, was quoted as follows: 

I received a notification sonic time ago from the secretary of 
the Yale corporation, to the effect that I had received twenty- 
five votes for nomination as Fellow of the College, in place of 
William Walter Phelps. That made me, under the rules, a 
candidate, unless I declined. I refused to stand, because I 
thought Mr. Phelps should be his own successor. Very few 
among the living graduates of Yale have taken as deep and 
intelligent an interest in the welfare of the college as he. 
Many years ago, Mr. Phelps originated the movement to have 
young Yale represented in the government of the college, and 
its success aroused and kept alive an interest all over the 
country, which has since become a conspicuous feature in the 
support and liberalization of the institution. There is no one, 
too, among the surviving members of the alumni who has done 
so much toward the financial prosperity of the university. Be- 
sides that, there are always at least two students at Yale who 
owe their ability to continue their studies to his generosity, 
and he has shown his faith in the faculty and in the superiority 
of the present instructors and present methods of instruction 
by sending there both his sons. 

The election was watched with the greatest interest. 
When the ballots were counted it was found that Mr. 
Phelps was more popular than even his friends anticipated, 
and it was a great triumph for them, as the vote he re- 
ceived was nearly equal to the combined vote of all his 
opponents. Thus Mr. Phelps was continued in the po- 
sition he had honorably filled so long in the government 
of the institution he loved and cherished so dearly all his 
life. 

After all these years of Yale's growth and prosperity 
under the new and progressive management which was 
instituted in 1872, it is wholly unnecessary now to seek 
arguments to show that the change in the government, 



294 William Walter Phelps 

which was due largely to the efforts of Mr. Phelps, was 
highly beneficial to the institution. The venerated ex- 
President Dwight, in a letter recently written, said, in re- 
ferring to this change: "I think the election of trustees 
by the graduates has given very general satisfaction to 
the friends of the university; and the introduction of 
graduates chosen by their fellow-graduates is believed to 
have awakened in a much greater measure the continued 
sympathy of Yale men." Could there be any better 
authority? There is also the testimony of numbers of 
other distinguished friends of Yale to the same effect. A 
graduate of Yale, whose family has done much for that 
institution and has himself reflected credit upon it by his 
eminence in the religious work of the world, says of this 
movement: "More and far better results grew out of it 
than its promoters ever anticipated." 

At the expiration of his term as a P"ellow of the Uni- 
versity in 1892, Mr. Phelps was filling the German mission 
and most positively declined to be a candidate for re- 
election, although urged by several of the faculty and 
many of those most interested in the prosperity of Yale 
to continue his services. One of the leading journals of 
Connecticut said at that time: 

The time has passed when a great collegiate institution 
has simply educational functions. It has to handle and invest 
large sums of money coming to it by bequest or subscription. 
It builds new buildings, purchases real estate, is obliged to 
care for the housing and feeding of hundreds of young men; 
furnishes them opportunities for gymnastic exercises and out- 
door recreation; gathers them together at religious, social, and 
oratorical meetings, as well as for the studies of the college 
curriculum. 

The drift of sentiment at Yale lately has been plainly towards 
men of first-rate business (qualifications for trustees rather than 
"figure-heads." Those who have studied the needs of the 
institution are united in their demand that each of these trus- 
tees' chairs shall be filled by a man who will be on hand regu- 



His Life and Public Services 295 

larly for work. Better a man of only ordinary capacity, with 
zeal and faith and above all regular attendance, than a bright 
star who has consented to have his name appear in the cata- 
logue as a Fellow, but who never does a stroke of real work 
for the progress of the college community.which he represents. 

The Hartford Post, which has always been foremost 
among the newspapers of Connecticut in promoting the 
welfare of the colleges and educational institutions of the 
State, referred to the Yale election in these terms: 

The next vacancy in the board of Yale trustees will be caused 
by the expiration of the term of Hon. William Walter Phelps 
of New Jersey. The Post is able to make the announcement 
that Mr. Phelps will not be a candidate for re-election. This 
will doubtless be a great disappointment to his host of friends 
throughout the country, who of course have renominated him, 
and to the Faculty of the University, some of whom have 
urged him to run again. For we may say, without exaggera- 
tion, that the Academic and Scientific departments have never 
had a more loyal, generous, or devoted friend and helper than 
W^illiam Walter Phelps. The present representation of alumni 
upon the official board of the university — a long step forward 
in progress and a system which has been copied by many other 
colleges — was inaugurated largely owing to Mr. Phelps's wise 
foresight and practical energy some twenty years ago, when 
Connecticut used to be represented as a matter of form by its 
six senior senators. By the change the State lost nothing 
while the college gained much. 

From 1872 to the term of his ministry to Germany, Mr. 
Phelps has been a very regular and active attendant at the 
regular Fellows' meetings. He has always sought to make 
them more than matters of form. The policy which he has 
advocated has been a broad and liberal one, worthy of Yale's 
claim as our greatest national university. We believe that Mr. 
Phelps could easily be elected for another term, notwithstand- 
ing it would be his fourth. But at the present time there is 
no prospect of his return to this country and he is right in 
standing for the principle that until the board of trustees is 



296 William Walter Phelps 

further enlarged — which ought to be and we presume will be 
done at no distant date, for circumstances are annually demon- 
strating its necessity — each one of the six men elected to repre- 
sent the alumni should attend all the present meetings and have 
more frequent ones. 

Other Connecticut journals referred to this affair in the 
same strain and the Hartford Courant said: 

Mr. Phelps was the moving force in securing the alumni 
representation on the corporation and was one of the first 
trustees chosen. Until he went abroad he was an active force 
in that body. 

The following is from the Press of Paterson, N. J., the 
editor of which, Mr. Wurts, always took a warm interest 
in Mr. Phelps's Yale work, and whose son was a graduate 
of that institution : 

William Walter Phelps, the American Minister at Berlin, 
who has been for twenty years one of the alumni representa- 
tives in the Yale corporation and ardently devoted to the in- 
terests of the University, some time ago, as stated in the Press, 
addressed the secretary of the college, declining to be a candi- 
date for re-election. Many friends of the college, appreciating 
the value of his services to their Alma Mater, have been urging 
him to reconsider his decision. A dispatch has been received 
from him stating that, while his interest in Yale is unabated, 
his lonsz term of service and his absence from the country 
have prompted him to this decision. 

There were several candidates for this vacancy, but 
Judge Henry H. Howland, an eminent lawyer of New 
York City, whose election was favored by Mr. Phelps, 
was easily chosen. 

President Dwight of the university opened his pub- 
lished report in 1892 with reference to Mr. Phelps: 

Mr. Phelps was one of the first six gentlemen who were 
elected by the graduates for membership in this body in the 



His Life and Public Services 297 

year 1872, when, in accordance with the request of the corpora- 
tion, an act of the legislature of the State was passed allowing 
such a selection to be made. By the allotment which was then 
arranged among the new members, a term of two years was 
assigned to him. His first period of service accordingly came 
to its end in 1874, but he was then re-elected for a full term 
of six years, and a similar re-election took place in 1880, and 
again in 18S6. The ])ublic duties to which he was called, in 
1889, as Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States Govern- 
ment to the German Empire have necessitated his absence 
from the country nearly all of the time since that date. He 
has thus been prevented, within this period, from taking the 
active part which he could have wished, and the importance 
of which he appreciated, in the administrative affairs of the 
institution. But he has at no moment lost sight of its interests 
or failed to keep in mind its prosperity and success. 

Mr. Phelps always held the presidents of Yale during 
his time — Woolsey, Porter, and Dvvight — in high esteem 
and delighted to do them honor whenever an occasion 
presented itself. This feeling of respect and friendship 
was fully reciprocated by these worthy men and distin- 
guished scholars. In 1885 he gave a great reception at 
his residence in Washington in honor of President Porter, 
who was on a visit to that city. It was a notable affair 
to which were invited all the Yale graduates located in 
or around Washington or who were visiting the national 
capital. Senators, members of the House, and other 
officials were among the number, and President Arthur 
and Mr. Blaine were among the especially invited guests. 
Old college days and incidents were recalled ; old college 
songs sung, and it was a jovial time, long remembered by 
those who were present. 

President Porter retired in 1886, after a service of forty 
years as a professor and afterwards president of Yale 
College. At the alumni dinner given in January of that 
year, at which the retiring president was the guest of 
honor, Mr. Phelps, who could not be present, sent a 



29^ William Walter Phelps 

letter from Washington, in which, among other things, 
he wrote : 

I solace myself with the thought that I am sure to be pleas- 
antly missed by my old friends and possibly by an older — the 
distinguished guest in whose honor the dinner is given. I 
suspect he knows I should have to shock his modesty; for 
who, who knows so much of his page of the college histor)' as 
I, could say anything and not allude to the continual, healthy, 
and permanent growth which Yale College has made under 
President Porter? 

To an increase in the number of students, which is thirty- 
three per cent. — in the first year of his presidency they num- 
bered 809, this year they number 1076, and this increase is 
regular; in the first five years the average for each year was 
950, in the second five years 1028, in the third five years 1078. 
To an increase in the number of instructors — he found 71 ; he 
leaves 114. Nor has it been only a growth of men. There 
has been an increase in funds. President Porter found 
$1,227,305 in the treasury; he will leave $2,155,705 — an in- 
crease of over seventy-five per cent. And lie will leave, be- 
sides, contingent inchoate rights to property that are estimated 
at more than $2,000,000. These are facts and figures. And 
as for the influence of Yale College in Church and State, law, 
business, medicine, and society, was it ever greater? Has it in 
this, the highest test, a rival? May not the most enthusiastic 
friends of the college content themselves with the wish that 
under his successor Yale College may prosper materially and 
morally, as it did under the reign of President Porter, the wise 
and good? 

President Porter was succeeded in the presidency by 
Rev. Dr. Timothy Dwight. one of the professors. While 
the new president was in Washington in 1887, the alumni 
residing in that city gave him a complimentary dinner, at 
which many celebrated people were present. Mr. Phelps 
was one of the selected speakers, and the following is a 
report of his address which appeared in the Washington 
Star: 



His Life and Public Services 299 

Mr. Phelps spoke to the toast of "Yale Characteristics," 
alluding to the peculiar loyalty with which all Yale men cling 
to their college, of the college feeling between classmates 
which expanded and included all alumni, and dwelling at most 
length on the variety in men, in their characters and occupa- 
tions, which the catalogue of Yale graduates exhibited, and 
said: 

" Why this little gathering at Chamberlin's is itself an illus- 
tration of Yale's variety and Yale's success in that variety. Is 
it a question of jurisprudence? There is the Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Source of American Law (Fuller), and by his side 
his white-haired colleague (Strong), about whom an intelligent 
people has not yet made up its mind whether his learning is 
the greater or his virtue. Is it a question of statesmanship? 
Here is a Senator so loved by Democrats and Republicans in 
his own State that he is called ' Our Evarts.' And here he 
seems always to have been. He was here counsel for a Presi- 
dent in, who did not want to be put out; here, counsel for a 
President out, who wanted to get in; here, Attorney-General 
for one President; here. Secretary of State for another Presi- 
dent; and now here, the only representative the imperial city 
of New York has sent to the United States Senate since the 
days of Alexander Hamilton. And now may his stay here be 
long and unbroken as his longest sentence." 

Mr. Phelps continued, making humorous allusions to the 
various distinguished alumni of the Washington association. 
He thought Secretary Whitney looked very natty and clean 
for an old tar constantly engaged in scraping barnacles from 
the navy. He said the best illustration that Yale's training 
applied at the same time would fit different recipients for 
different fates was, that there was Professor Marsh, Captain 
Button, and himself in the same class. Marsh was now presi- 
dent of the National Academy, a great scientist; Button was 
a gallant soldier, who had conquered the volcanoes; and 
Phelps was nothing but a poor Jersey politician. 

In conclusion, Mr. Phelps, turning to President Dwight, 
said: " This is only a glance at the glories of the trust so re- 
cently committed to you. As one who, as a trustee, is directly 
responsible for this transfer, I declare here the satisfaction and 



300 William Walter Phelps 

pride with which I review my actions. It has been ratified by 
the large constituency I represent with enthusiastic unanimity, 
a unanimity as remarkable as that with which the Board of 
Fellows representing Old Yale and Young Yale and Middle- 
aged Yale, representing New York, which criticises everything 
Yalensian, and New Haven, which approves everything 
Yalensian, at the first ballot put upon your shoulders the 
gown once worn by Stiles and Clapp and Day and Woolsey and 
Porter. And by this action history shall repeat itself ; or rather 
Providence, in the interest of pure Christianity and sound 
learning, shall force history to record that in the beginning of 
the nineteenth century Yale College and in the beginning of 
the twentieth century Yale University was under the efficient 
and successful administration of Timothy Dwight." 



CHAPTER XXIX 

Koppay's Historical Painting of Phelps and Bismarck — The Minister also 
Depicted on Canvas by Carl Gutherz — His Work on the Bench — 
Dedication of Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at New Brunswick — 
His Reception at the Hamilton Club — Elected an Honorary Mem- 
ber of the Chamber of Commerce — His Portrait in the New Jersey 
Capitol 

ALTHOUGH Judge Phelps had made the sincere an- 
nouncement that he no longer desired political pre- 
ferment, he was too prominent a figure in the public eye 
to be allowed to disappear. Shortly after the reception 
given him by his Englewood friends in July, 1893, he re- 
ceived a compliment of a somewhat different character, 
orieinatine on another continent. Attention was called, 
by the publication in Harper s Weekly, to a picture taken 
from Koppay's historical painting then on exhibition in 
Berlin, of Mr. Phelps as American Commissioner discuss- 
ing the Samoan treaty with Prince Bismarck. This picture 
was announced by the foreign art critics as possessing a 
high historical value. Unfortunately this valuable paint- 
ing was destroyed by a fire, which occurred a few years 
since, in the present Phelps mansion at Teaneck. Har- 
per s Weekly published its copy of the painting with this 
introduction r^r 

The portraits of Hon. William Walter Phelps and Prince 
Bismarck, which have recently been completed by Koppay, 
are now on exhibition in Berlin, and will shortly be sent to 
New York for exhibition also. The painting from which the 

301 



302 William Walter Phelps 

illustration in this number is taken is a very large canvas, both 
figures being full-length and nearly life-size, and it is said to 
be one of Koppay's most successful pieces of work. It will 
have a peculiar interest to all Americans for several reasons, 
and will be sure to attract considerable attention when it arrives 
in this country. Herr Koppay is probably the most famous 
of German portrait-painters to-day, and he is said to have 
painted more " crowned heads " than any other living artist, 
except possibly Angeli of Vienna. Originally one of Len- 
bach's pupils, he has fairly outstripped his master. He works 
quickly, sketching the heads from life — Mr. Phelps's having 
been drawn just previous to his return to America, — and then 
transfers them to the canvas, magnifying the strong features 
almost to caricature, and leaving the finishing touches to a less 
famous but more painstaking artist. 

The painting is complete in itself, of course, but it is also a 
forerunner of the great p)icture of the Samoan Conference 
which Koppay is now at work upon. The Conference sat at 
Berlin in 1889 under the presidency of Count Herbert Bis- 
marck, the Prince's son, who then held the position of Im- 
perial Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Phelps was the chief 
commissioner for the United States; and Prince Bismarck, 
though he did not himself take part in the sittings of the Con- 
ference, followed the whole matter very closely from day to 
day, and often invited 'either the whole Conference or indi- 
vidual members to his famous Radziwill Palace, at 76 Wilhelm- 
strasse, almost across the way from the Auswdrtige Amt, where 
the sittings were held. 

During the course of the proceedings Mr. Phelps and he be- 
came fast friends, and the incident of Koppay's picture repre- 
sents one of the many friendly visits which Mr. Phelps made 
to the Chancellor's palace. The two used to sit together, or 
walk about the fine olil hall, discussing the progress of the 
Conference, the Chancellor's two immense and well-known 
hounds following them about wherever they went. Kojipay 
has caught them all at a moment when Mr. Phelps has ap- 
parently just finished an earnest discussion of some detail of 
the treaty. Bismarck, with his hand on one hound's head, is 
on the point of making a reply after a moment's reflection, 



His Life and Public Services 303 

with the fixed look in his eyes of one who is still thinking of 
his coming remark. 

When Mr. Phelps settled in Berlin afterwards as American 
Minister to Germany, this friendship with Bismarck was re- 
newed and strengthened, and the painting, while it is sug- 
gested by the Conference over the question of Samoa, is also 
a monument to the keen friendship of these two distinguished 
men. 

A few weeks later there was placed in the Corcoran 
Gallery of Fine Arts, Washington, a remarkable picture 
intended to commemorate a very striking passage in 
American history. The subject is a scene from an im- 
portant diplomatic episode in which the United States 
bore a part — that of the Bering Sea Tribunal of Arbitra- 
tion between this country and Great Britain, which sat 
in Paris from April to June, 1893. Mr. Phelps, then 
through with his German mission, but before returning 
home, had been called upon by the Washington authori- 
ties to defend the claims of the United States in oppo- 
sition to the ablest English lawyers. 

This picture is the work of Carl Gutherz, a native of 
the United States who had lived and studied in Paris for 
many years. The canvas is about ten feet by six, and 
very rich in coloring, the scene being laid in a magnificent 
room in the building of the French Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs, where the sittings of the Arbitration were held. 

The moment chosen by the artist is when Mr. Phelps, 
the leading American counsel, is addressing the tribunal. 
He stands immediately in front of Baron De Courcel, 
the president; Justice Harlan and Senator Morgan, the 
American arbitrators, appearing at the left of De Courcel. 
The chief British counsel. Lord Charles Russell, has just 
risen at the right of Mr. Phelps, apparently for the pur- 
pose of interposing an objection. On either side are 
attaches, counsel, correspondents, and distinguished spec- 
tators, — ladies and gentlemen who were in daily attend- 
ance, for the most part Americans. The portraits and 



304 William Walter Phelps 

figures of the Amcrian arbitrators and Mr. Phelps are 
excellent, and the picture holds a place as a masterpiece 
of historic art. 

In July of this year also, a very graceful national event 
occurred in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was the unveil- 
ing, with appropriate ceremonies, of a statue of Abraham 
Lincoln. It was erected in honor of the Scottish-Ameri- 
can soldiers who fought for the Union in the American 
War of the Rebellion, and who returned to their native 
land where they were buried with no mark to their 
graves. The monument originated with Mr. Wallace 
Bruce, then United States Consul to Edinburgh, and Mr. 
Henry K. Heath of Brooklyn. The city authorities gave 
a handsome site in Colton Hill Cemetery, and the monu- 
ment was erected by aid of contributions from patriotic 
Americans. Mr. Phelps was one of the very first con- 
tributors to this fund and took great interest in the affair 
from first to last. 

After the final adjournment, late in July, of the term 
of the Court of Errors and Appeals, in which Judge 
Phelps sat for the first time, he visited the State encamp- 
ment of the New Jersey National Guard at Sea Girt, 
where he was the guest of Governor Werts, and where he 
was at home among officers and guardsmen, all of whom 
learned to know him. There and at Long Branch and 
other coast resorts in the vicinity, he met many old 
friends and acquaintances from New York and New 
Jersey and other places, who were summering at the sea- 
shore. Numerous inquiries were made of him about the 
Germans, especially of the characteristics of their public 
men, historical characters, and the royal family. He al- 
ways talked well and what he told of men of national and 
international fame was charmingly related and drew the 
closest attention. Out of the newspaper quotations of 
these conversations probably grew the reports, widely 
circulated by the press, that Judge Phelps contemplated 
writing his personal recollections of the distinguished 



His Life and Public Services 305 

personages he had met during his life, which would in- 
chide most of the men of the world of marked ability 
with whom he had associated on terms of equality. One 
prominent journal said: 

A book of this kind from Judge Phelps would certainly be 
a fascinating one. Few Americans, few men, indeed, of any 
nationality, have enjoyed such opportunities for studying emi- 
nent characters on both sides of the Atlantic, from what may 
be called the inside point of view, as Mr. Phelps. If it be 
true that he meditates adding a trip into the fields of author- 
ship to the many-sided variety of his life, we sincerely trust 
that the intention will be carried out, as a record of personal 
reminiscences from his pen would be a rare treat. So long as 
Mr. Phelps was in the diplomatic service, of course his lips 
had to be sealed on shadowed topics of the deepest interest 
upon which he could if he chose shed a brilliant light. May 
we not hope that now, when he is a free man once more, he 
will meet what seems to be a reasonable demand that he shall 
tell what he knows and what we all want to know, about mat- 
ters not merely personal but cosmopolitan? He could do 
much to give what is called " history " a direction from which 
ignorance, imagination, or prejudice would not be able here- 
after to swerve it. 

A newspaper published at the national capital expressed 
this view: 

Hon. William Walter Phelps is reported to be on the verge 
of writing a book of reminiscences. If our ex-Minister to 
Berlin tells all he knows about public men and women, he 
will astonish the world, for Mr. Phelps's memory is so phe- 
nomenal as to be absolutely appalling. His present occupa- 
tion is very congenial. Mr. Phelps has always loved the law, 
which would have been his profession had fortune been less 
kind. 

Had Judge Phelps chosen to indulge in this pastime he 
probably would have been excelled by few writers in 



3o6 William Walter Phelps 

ability to portray with vividness the personal character- 
istics of the men whom he had known. The newspaper 
reports of the summer of 1893 led a publishing house of 
distinction to persistent efforts to have him write a book 
of reminiscences, but he never for a moment had such 
an intention and could not be induced to entertain the 
suggestion. 

Judge Phelps was in daily attendance at the November 
term of the court and found the duties very agreeable to 
him. He gave close attention to all the details and made 
himself familiar with all the routine and formalities. At 
the close of this term a New Jersey journal, whose editor 
had an unusual knowledge of court matters in the State, 
made this allusion : 

We have it on the very best authority that the new Judge 
has made a very favorable impression on his colleagues of the 
bench and the members of the bar. He shows excellent judg- 
ment and an intelligent grasp of the law as well as "sound 
horse sense " in his conclusions. 

Judge Phelps is a lawyer, a man of affairs, a man of wide 
and varied business experience, and his long public career has 
equipped him with a fund of special and general knowledge 
that would make him useful in any position. 

It is the opinion of all who know him that he is a valuable 
addition to the bench of the court of last resort of the State. 

A special correspondent at Trenton of the Newark 
Advertiser, mentioned what seemed to be a singular fact, 
that an ex-Minister to Germany and a man of the highest 
and broadest culture, who had occupied so many high 
stations, should be there so regularly when the court was 
sitting, hearing dry arguments and lengthy legal disquisi- 
tions. The writer continued : 

I spoke to Judge Phelps coming from the court-room, when 
he said, in that easy, graceful manner that always evokes ad- 
miration: "Is n't it curious that I should sit right next to 



His Life and Public Services 307 

Judge Leon Abbett all the time? We have been political op- 
ponents for years, and perhaps, to a certain extent, political 
rivals. Yet here we are, as chummy and friendly as you 
please. The funniest part of it all is that in the months we 
have presided together we have always agreed on the points 
presented and in the decisions rendered. Our unanimity of 
judgment is quite remarkable. The ex-Governor seems to 
like his position. He is alert and active, when it was sup- 
posed, after the series of political disappointments he encoun- 
tered, he might be sullen and disgruntled, but he is cheerful 
and fond of his work." 

" How do you like the position of Judge? " was asked. 

'* Well, I find it rather laborious. It is not the motions and 
the long arguments I mind so much. But I am trying to think 
up the law that for thirty years I thought out of my mind. 
You see I paid no attention to the law for years, being occu- 
pied with other matters. Now I am compelled to try and re- 
call what I once knew and apply it to the facts as presented." 

Mr. Phelps tells a good story of his career as a lawyer. He 
had the large estate to handle that was left by his father. His 
counsel was Jacob Vanatta, a famous lawyer years ago, and 
Attorney-General of New Jersey in 1875. Phelps was inter- 
ested in a railroad in this State, but he kept his connection 
secret. His counsel was not aware of it. Opposition to some 
of the plans of the company suddenly arose, and Mr. Va- 
natta was retained by the opposition. 

"I heard one day," says Mr. Phelps, "that an important 
motion and argument were to be made by Vanatta the next 
day. There was no time to hunt up counsel. I concluded to 
defend the road myself. So I studied up the law on the sub- 
ject as best I could, and the next morning presented myself in 
court. Vanatta made his argument, little suspecting what I 
was there for. When he finished, I got up and made my 
speech." 

" Did you win the case against your counsel? " 

" I did," laughingly replied the Judge. 

Ex-Senator Large, of Hunterdon County, came along in 
time to hear Mr. Phelps tell the above story, and as it was 
concluded, he remarked: 



3o8 William Walter Phelps 

" Yes, and I can tell you something about it. Vice-Chan- 
cellor Van Fleet narrated the instance to me one time, and 
said that he was present in the court-room at the time. He 
saw you get up, and after you got started he became interested 
in your manner and the cleverness of your argument. The 
more you talked, the more interested he became. He said 
it was one of the most enjoyable addresses he had ever heard. 
Never having seen you, nor, I believe, heard of you, he in- 
quired your name of a friend. When told, he said you would 
make your mark." 

Two characteristics of Mr. Phelps are well brought out 
in the foregoing quotation — his entire freedom from parti- 
san resentment, and his self-reliance, indulged in often to 
perverseness and seeming recklessness. 

On November 15th an imposing Soldiers' and Sailors' 
monument was dedicated at New Brunswick. The cere- 
monies were elaborate and there was a great civic and 
military display. Judge Phelps was one of the speakers 
and he began his address in his accustomed easy and 
humorous style, saying that New Brunswick was the 
easiest to pass through and the hardest to stop at of any 
city in New Jersey. The politicians wanted to reach 
Trenton and Washington, the business man New York 
or Philadelphia. Judge Phelps, sometimes politician, 
sometimes business man, had suffered under both con- 
ditions, but he always looked out when he went through, 
and he always thought of all New Brunswick's good 
things and bad things. After alluding to some of the 
well-known politicians living in that city, he launched out 
seriously, saying : 

It is a credit now, and it will be a greater one as the years 
roll by to link one's name with any effort to spread and per- 
petuate the fame of the soldiers and sailors who killed seces- 
sion. Under the apple tree at Appomattox they buried the 
only enemy that ever was or could be strong enough to strangle 
the national life. The conflict of those who on one side found 



His Life and Public Services 309 

in the nation and on the other side in the State their country 
was the conflict of patriotism itself. For that we could fight 
each other. 

We shall tjuarrel, and our sons and grandsons shall quarrel, 
over different questions of policy, but we shall not fight. We 
fought in the Rebellion, not for policies, but for the country 
— the one side believing the State was his country, the other 
side the nation. All questions less than that of the existence 
of our country American citizens — always patient, always law- 
abidmg, always believing in the final efftcacy of moral forces 
— will settle on the platform, not on the field — by ballots, not 
by bullets. 

To-day some of us differ, and earnestly, on important ques- 
tions. Can you imagine the American people going to war 
with each other on these questions? Can you imagine them 
fighting each other on any question — the question of union 
and disunion being settled forever? 

So the soldiers and sailors of the republic fought better 
than they knew, when they put a bloody but final injunction 
on the heresy that any star might at will leave our galaxy, 
shoot itself into darkness, and so, piecemeal, blot out the 
light and glory of the heavens. They assured to us liberty 
and peace for all time by assuring to us immunity from the 
only danger that threatened our national existence. For this, 
the soldiers and sailors of New Jersey fought, to whom to-day 
we consecrate this monument. Let them sleep in peace and 
honor. They died that liberty and union might live. 

The annual dinner of the Chamber of Confimerce in New- 
York is always an event of importance. The orators on 
each occasion are limited to a small number, invited from 
the professional men, scholars, and statesmen of the day. 
The audiences they address are composed chiefly of 
notable merchants and financiers of the city. Judge 
Phelps was chosen to speak at the dinner on the 2ist of 
November, 1893. A conspectus of his address is taken 
from the newspaper reports of that entertainment. On 
being introduced by President Charles S. Smith as a 



3IO William Walter Phelps 

"scholar and philosopher as well as a business man," 
Judge Phelps said : 

I thank you, Mr, President, that you have at last found 
time to say those kind things of me. When I met you on your 
trip you seemed too busy to say them to me. Indeed, you 
were so anxious to get rid of me that I thought at first you 
feared I wanted to borrow money of you. But when I noticed 
the book you carried, I made up my mind you were simply 
preoccupied. I could n't help reading the title; you carried 
it as if you wanted me to. It was Their Wedding journey. 

Of course you did n't remember. It was at Naples, and the 
sight of you made me very homesick. And yet it was n't you 
so much; it was the Chamber of Commerce that, in your per- 
son, was making the circuit of the earth. As you walked 
quickly away, leaving the odors of Ceylon and the East behind 
you, I no longer saw the smoke of Vesuvius nor the haze of 
Capri. I saw only the old Chamber in William Street; the 
historic gatherings whose minute guns roused the nation when 
anything on rebel field or legislative floor threatened the public 
weal; the procession of noble presidents, all of whom since 
Pelatiah Perrit have been my personal friends; and even these 
dinners. I saw this table, with its victims waiting the hour of 
electrocution, and more unhappy than the condemned, for 
they doubt, and we know, that the operation will be a painful 
one. In short, gentlemen, I thought so much of you all that 
I grew homesick, and when I came back I found all other 
things so changed that I never felt quite sure until to-night 
that I was at home. But you are not changed. The Old 
Guard never surrenders, and the Chamber of Commerce never 
changes. 

The speaker had evidently become impressed with the 
changed American conditions since the beginning of his 
political and public career, and among other changes he 
had noticed were these : 

When I went away, a man read one newspaper of a morning 
and believed much that he read in it; now he reads as many 



His Life and Public Services 311 

as he has time to, and believes nothing except the few things 
in which they all agree. I am not rash enough to trace the 
effect of this journalistic debauch upon the reader, who prac- 
tises it daily — for journalists have heavy hands and are quick 
to use them on any critic, — but I am sure of its effect on the 
newspaper: it increases the circulation and diminishes its in- 
fluence. Time was when the chief object of a great journalist 
was to lead and instruct public opinion. Now, with rare ex- 
ceptions, he is content to follow public opinion and uses his 
best gifts to amuse or attack. There is but one logical con- 
clusion to this ambition: the editor must make his journal 
personal. But what excuse is there for personal journalism, 
and what limit? With the appetite growing on what it feeds 
on, can it stop its downward trend until some triumphant Sun- 
day issue prints the New York Directory, with a sketch and 
portrait for every name, and this ignoble competition dies of 
satiety? 

Nevertheless, he found that newspapers of to-day were 
getting and printing all the news as that was never done 
before. As another change, he found that party spirit is 
not so strong. One manifestation of this was the dis- 
crimination of voters in crossing the names of bad candi- 
dates. He continued: 

This indiscriminate reading of all newspapers has much to 
do with the change. People nowadays, reading all the papers, 
know who good candidates are, and have to have it out with 
their consciences if they vote for a bad one. I think here is 
another reason why party ties rest lightly. We are now far 
enough from the fires of the war to perceive that all policies 
which bear the party name are not of vital importance. 

But perhaps a third reason operates more strongly than any 
other in inducing men to vote independently, or, rather, for 
the best in men and measures selected from all parties. It is 
the discovery that a party organization nowadays is an im- 
mense and complicated machine; that in our eagerness to load 
the party with all attainable force, so that its momentum for a 



312 William Walter Phelps 

good cause should become irresistible, we have created an 
organization compact and welded, which is irresistible also for 
harm. 

Another change he found was in the popular regard for 
the United States Senate. Of this he said: 

Admiration is gone. In its place there is manifest in speech 
and opinion almost pity for a body, where wealth and party 
service of the lowest kind have filled so many seats, and where 
Senators have shown themselves incapable of transacting the 
ordinary business of an assembly. The time has ceased to be 
when dignity, character, and ability were quickest summed up 
in the phrase " a Senatorial figure." 

He was glad to find that Americans are not worrying 
so much or working so many hours as they used to do — in 
the East, that is. He was struck with the procession of 
careworn faces at the Chicago Fair. He said as he looked 
at them he felt prouder than ever of his countrymen as 
possessing beyond all other peoples the noblest elements 
of manhood and womanhood, "But I felt that one thing 
was wanting— to drop care that made Martha worry un- 
necessarily over many things." 

This frank and direct talk was highly enjoyed by those 
who heard it and evoked much applause. This address, 
so marked in its originality that when published it was 
numerously and variously criticised. It received the de- 
nunciation of one class of newspapers, but journals of the 
best repute admitted the justness of its strictures, and 
from the public, by whom it was largely read, came gen- 
eral approbation. 

In his closing remarks the vigorous Americanism of the 
orator cropped out, and the last words that William 
Walter Phelps ever addressed to a public audience con- 
tained the following glowing and heartfelt tribute to his 
own country : 

Pardon me, gentlemen, if, in conclusion, I say that my four 
years' friendly residence among the nicest people of Europe 



His Life and Public Services 313 

only confirms my impression, that God gave to us the best 
country in the world, and, in the fulness of time, filled it with 
the best people. And, after fifty years' study of my country 
and my countrymen, I hold the gift of American citizenship 
God's best gift, weighted though it be with the terrible re- 
sponsibility of each citizen to see that such a republic receives 
no detriment. 

There was a reception given to Judge Phelps on the 
evening of December 14th, by the Hamilton Club of 
Paterson, the leading social organization of that city. 
Although this complimentary demonstration originated 
with members of the Club, the affair was participated in 
by the leading men of the city, representing all depart- 
ments of life, — law, finance, manufacturing, trade, and 
the professions. They wished to express their regard for 
him who had once represented them in the councils of 
the nation and was always loyal to the true interests of 
his constituents; who had afterwards filled other posts 
of honor, but who never forgot those who were his old 
and early friends. The reception was without politics, 
speeches, or formalities. When Mr. Phelps came, accom- 
panied by Hon. Garret A. Hobart, there was no need of 
a formal introduction. Mr. J. E. Crowell the editor of 
the Paterson Call, in his report of the entertainment, 
said : 

With the exception of a few out-of-towners everybody knew 
him, and it was simply "How d' ye do" here and "Good 
evening " there with this one and that one, just the same as if 
meeting on the street or in a railroad depot. Judge Phelps's 
memory for names is remarkable, and his customary salutation 
to those with whom he has been specially well acquainted is 
by addressing them by their Christian names in the most in- 
formal and intimate manner imaginable. 

Judge Phelps has not changed very much since he was here 
before his departure for Germany, with the exception that his 
hair, formerly very dark, is decidedly gray — in fact, almost 



314 William Walter Phelps 

white. Taking notice of this fact, the writer commented 
upon it. 

** I have been gray,"' said Mr. Phelps, very gravely, "ever 
since Mr. Blaine died. That was one of the greatest blows of 
my life. Had it not occurred, I would not be gray-haired now. 
Had it happened sooner, I would have been gray-haired earlier. 
I attribute my gray hair to the shock caused by the death of 
my dear friend, James G. Blaine." 

Judge Phelps .seemed to really feel what he said, but after a 
momentary silence, during which a cloud could be seen to pass 
over his face, he lapsed into more pleasant topics and began 
to indulge in reminiscences of former visits to Paterson. 

Every one present seemed to want to have a talk with 
Mr. Phelps, consequently a lively conversation was kept 
up, and the evening passed pleasantly to all, notwith- 
standing there were no oratorical accompaniments to the 
banquet. Nearly every one present bid the guest of the 
evening a cordial good-bye before he took his departure, 
and in this way ended the last public social gathering 
Mr. Phelps ever attended, and it was in a city that had 
adhered to him so steadfastly in all his Congressional 
contests, and had constantly felt an honest pride in his 
subsequent successful and honorable career. 

The old-time home life was kept up in Teaneck in 
January and February, 1894, and there was much quiet 
entertaining of friends. Sleighing was good in January, 
and Judge Phelps took marked pleasure in driving over 
the new roads which he had recently constructed. His 
diary shows that he was enjoying the reading of the new 
books of the year and he wrote interesting criticisms of 
those that most attracted him. 

In letter writing Judge Phelps was almost as happy as 
in conversation. Throughout all his busy life, and espe- 
cially during his periods of rest at Teaneck. he gave much 
attention to personal correspondence with friends and inti- 
mate acquaintances. These letters, — from his own hands, 
— noticeable for their virile and upright chirography, 



His Life and Public Services 315 

graphic in style, cheerful in tone, and full of pleasing 
personalities, could hardly fail to be welcomed and valued 
by all who received them. He never wrote a letter to a 
friend that was not interesting or that did not display 
some of his well-known characteristics. 

Early in February the New York Chamber of Com- 
merce elected Judge Phelps an honorary member. This 
was an unusual honor and he esteemed it highly. The 
Chamber has always been very exclusive in bestowing 
this distinction, and at that date only five men living bore 
it. Besides Judge Phelps, the New York Chamber of 
Commerce had never made but one citizen of New Jersey 
an honorary member — Mr, Edison, for services rendered 
commerce in the domain of science, — and now Mr. Phelps 
was honored for services in diplomacy. In his letter ac- 
cepting this favor. Judge Phelps wrote: 

You have given me great pleasure in admitting me by this 
golden gateway to the official society of my father's friends 
and mine. It seems to me that those of my fellow-citizens 
with whom I have had the greatest intimacy were largely 
members of the Chamber of Commerce. Indeed, I remember 
in a speech at one of your banquets, I said I felt as much at 
home in the picture gallery of the Chamber of Commerce as if 
I were walking among the portraits of my friends. 

The portrait of Judge Phelps was afterwards placed in 
this gallery, where that of his father had been for years. 

An admirable portrait of Judge Phelps painted by 
Huntingdon the artist, has been placed by the New 
Jersey authorities in the rotunda of the Capitol at Tren- 
ton, among those of the governors and other prominent 
Jerseymen who served the State with distinction. 



CHAPTER XXX 

His Last Illness— Seeks Rest in the South — He Ends His Diary— Resigns 
His Last Public Appointment — His Fortitude in Sickness— His 
Daughter Hurries across the Ocean to His Bedside — A Peaceful 
Death 

IN February Mr. Phelps's throat began to trouble him 
seriously, and resultant illness confined him to his 
home for many days. He took his seat, however, in the 
court at the beginning of the term soon after the ist of 
March, and was in regular attendance until the final 
adjournment for that term, on the 28th of that month. 

But it was noticed that the long sittings of the court 
had apparently become painful to him and that he was 
enduring their irksomeness with labored patience. A few 
days after he was released from the work of the session 
he went to the Hygeia Hotel, at Old Point Comfort, 
Virginia, a resort that had been restful to him. He was 
there but a short time when he sent a request to one who 
had been his secretary and political confidant to join him. 
It turned out that he wanted the companionship of some 
one who well understood him and knew when conversa- 
tion would be agreeable to him, and when, owing to his 
condition, he wanted silence and seclusion. His friend, 
on reaching him, found a startling change. He was 
avoiding company and observation. Acquaintances of 
prominence in society, business, and the affairs of the 
country, some of whom he had associated with officially, 
were constantly coming and going from the hotel, but he 
shunned their recognition. This was little like his old 

316 



His Life and Public Services 317 

self, for he had always liked the broad and sunny thor- 
oughfares of life, and it had never been his custom to sit 
in the dark corners. But now, one who had always 
mingled with his fellow-men in all walks of life, for the 
first time during his existence, was seeking seclusion. 
Yet he was neither morose nor melancholy, for the change 
was wrought by sheer physical inability to maintain formal 
conversation, and it was evident that disease which he 
inherited was at last making dangerous inroads upon his 
feeble system. It was then that he found himself un- 
equal in strength and ambition to continue his diary. 
The last entry was made April lo, 1894. He probably 
never hated a human being. If he had, it would most 
certainly have been disclosed in his diary, where little 
that was even unpleasant was written of any one. It has 
been truly said: "There is always a superfluity of gall in 
a diarist's ink." There was never any of that with Mr. 
Phelps. Even the serious misfortune of constant ill- 
health after reaching manhood created in him no taint of 
bitterness regarding men and things. His philosophy, 
which he was now called to put into practice, was to 
take life as he found it with composure, and he felt it to 
be a man's part to accept with equanimity good days and 
evil days, and no one ever accepted the latter with more 
unflinching courage. 

He was in the open air as much as possible, riding and 
sailing, hoping thereby to revive his waning vitality and 
stay his malady, but after a few weeks spent at Old Point 
Comfort without a sensible improvement in health he 
went to the Hot Springs of West Virginia. There so- 
ciety was lively and he met bright men and women who 
had known him in Washington and New York life. A 
temporary revival of physical strength brought out a little 
of his natural vivacity, but a recurrence of weakness com- 
pelled him to seek more of the quiet of his own apart- 
ments, where in occasional and quiet talks with his friend, 
who was yet with him, he would speak of the past, but 



3i8 William Walter Phelps 

never of the future. He had doubtless come to realize 
that the close of his days could not be far away, and now 
that the bonds of ambition were entirely broken, he 
showed by his demeanor that he felt that pain and sor- 
row, and even death, need have no terrors for those who 
dare them and meet them bravely. 

Finding no lasting improvement in health at the Hot 
Springs, Mr. Phelps sought his home at Teaneck, where 
he arrived May i8th. At once he received not only pro- 
ficient medical aid, but treatment from most skilful sur- 
geons and specialists of New York, who resorted to all 
the remedies medical science had devised. But the dis- 
ease, which had developed into tuberculosis, involving 
the base of the brain and spine, steadily progressed. 
Mrs. Phelps, who was in Europe, was informed by cable 
of his danger, and hurried home to give him, after her 
arrival, every care and comfort. 

All this time none could discern that he was enduring 
the tortures of disease unless they questioned him if he 
were suffering pain, so uncomplaining was his nature and 
so sturdy his fortitude in bearing physical agony. 

Judge Phelps had been appointed by the Governor one 
of the Commission, created by the Legislature, to make a 
revision and amendments to the constitution of the State 
of New Jersey, which was to meet in the first days of 
June. It was proposed by members who had held con- 
sultation to make Judge Phelps the presiding officer of 
that body. He had lost sight of the time of meeting and 
was reminded by his former secretary that the commis- 
sion would meet for organization in a few days. It was 
of course plain that he could not attend, and he said he 
would write a letter of resignation to the Governor. He 
rose weakly from his couch in his library and reached his 
desk, where, resting his face in both hands, he appeared 
unable to write. The secretary told him he would go at 
once to the Governor and tender the resignation verbally. 
Judge Phelps said, "I wish that you would," and then, 



His Life and Public Services 319 

with a grateful look and the sweetest of smiles, reached 
out his hand feebly to his old and tried friend, and the 
two never saw each other again. 

Governor Werts received the resignation with surprise, 
for it was not publicly known that Judge Phelps was so 
sick, and the announcement drew from the Governor ex- 
pressions of disappointment and genuine sorrow. He 
did not fill Mr. Phelps's place in the commission. 

A few days passed wearily and painfully, and after May 
31st the invalid did not leave his bed. If he had ever 
indulged in fair illusions which had ended in defeated 
purposes and prostrated hopes, such disappointments 
did not cloud the clear sunshine of his closing days, for 
to the last hours of his perfect consciousness he was the 
same sweet-tempered and love-worthy man, friend, hus- 
band, and father. 

His serious illness became known to the newspaper 
world. Reporters were daily on the alert to chronicle 
favorable or unfavorable symptoms. Letters and tele- 
grams of inquiry and solicitude from every quarter poured 
in upon the family. 

When the sick man came fully to realize there was no 
hope of recovery, he expressed pathetically a wish to look 
once more upon the face of his only daughter. At this 
very time she was hurrying with all the speed of modern 
travel to his bedside from Berlin to Cuxhaven to catch 
the first steamer leaving for her native land. She arrived 
at the Quarantine in New York harbor at daylight on 
June 15th. Arrangements had been made with the cus- 
tom-house authorities to waive formalities and facilitate 
her landing. Her brother, Sheffield, awaited at Quaran- 
tine on a fast tugboat, the deck of which he had paced 
all night in anxious waiting for the arrival of her vessel. 
The worn and impatient traveller had anticipated the 
possibility of extraordinary preparations to hurry her to 
her New Jersey home, and she was all ready to disem- 
bark. After a few hurried words with the sorrow-worn 



320 William Walter Phelps 

brother, she hastened over the ship's side, and her feet 
had scarcely touched the deck of the little vessel when it 
sped away in the early dawn. When the brother had left 
his father's bedside a few hours before, it was with the 
knowledge that the end was not far away, and with fear 
and misgivings the two travellers on the tug talked of 
reaching the dying father in time. The brother knew 
also that for several days the physicians had exercised all 
their skill to keep their patient alive until his daughter 
should arrive. For a week he had been unconscious ex- 
cept at brief intervals, and the nerves of the entire house- 
hold were strained to their utmost tension. The boat 
landed at Fort Lee. Not a moment was lost in getting 
ashore and into an awaiting carriage, which was driven 
with all the speed of fast horses until the Teaneck home 
was reached at half-past seven. On the threshold the 
worst fears of the careworn daughter were almost real- 
ized. She was told that her father was not dead, but had 
sunk into a lethargy from which the doctors said he could 
hardly recover. So that now, after the heartsore and dis- 
tressing trip across the Atlantic and the lightning race on 
the shore of home, the daughter had arrived to find that 
she was too late to hear any last words from her dying 
father. When she spoke, that he might understand that 
she had come, a feeble pressure of the hand, a mere 
tremor, told that he knew she was there, but this faint 
recognition was everything to her. It was the last gleam 
of departing intelligence from the dying man. This was 
on Friday. On the Saturday evening following, it was 
evident that all would be over before another sunrise, and 
a few minutes after one on Sunday morning, with all his 
family present, Mr. Phelps died so peacefully that those 
around him hardly knew when there had passed from 
earth the spirit of one who had lived 

"To make the world within his reach 
Somewhat the better for his being, 

And gladder for his liuman speech." 



CHAPTER XXXI 

His Funeral — A Day of Mourning in Englewood — Church Filled with 
People from All Ranks of Life — The Sermon — Estimates of His 
Life and Work by Many Writers 

THE shock of Judge Phelps's death was felt in his 
county severely, and all over the State and country. 
Hundreds of messages of sorrow and condolence came 
from all sections, and a sense of public loss was genuinely 
felt and expressed. 

The funeral was on Wednesday, June 20th. Early in 
the morning there was a brief service at the house, in the 
room where the body lay, the casket being covered with 
flowers, the gifts of the employees of the estate. Only 
the family and a few close friends were present. The 
services were conducted by Rev. James Eells, pastor 
of the Presbyterian Church at Englewood. He read a 
chapter of Scripture and, after a prayer, spoke for a few 
minutes of Mr. Phelps and his Christian character and 
the kindness and affection he had always shown to 
those in his employ. Then an opportunity was given 
for those present to look for the last time at the face 
of the dead, and all the older retainers filed slowly 
through the room and said a silent good-bye. The 
pall-bearers were those who had been assistants and 
employees of Mr. Phelps in various departments of his 
business, — those who knew him best, — which was in keep- 
ing with his simple life and tastes and his regard for all 
\Vho had served him. 

It was one of the most pleasant of June mornings when 

21 



322 William Walter Phelps 

the cortege with the mourners started for the church. 
The route for a large part of the way lay through the 
Teaneck estate, and over valley lands the dead master 
had spent a lifetime in beautifying, passing the ivy-clad 
ruins of his former mansion in which he had taken so 
much pride, along roads that he had made which were 
lined with trees, many of which he had planted with his 
own hands. 

The scenes along the route were constantly suggestive 
of the passing away of one who had engrafted himself 
into the hearts of all who knew him. Flags everywhere 
were at half-mast upon lawns and private residences, and, 
reaching Englewood, the people on the streets stopped 
and reverently lifted their hats as the cortege passed. All 
the business places of the city were closed during the 
hour of the funeral. 

The church and streets in the vicinity were crowded, 
and it seemed that almost all the State were present. 
Special trains came filled. They brought, among others, 
the Governor and State officials. The Judges of the 
Court of Errors and Appeals, the members of the Supreme 
Court of New Jersey, and the State Bar Association, each 
attended in a body. Many other organizations were 
represented. Farmers, mechanics, merchants, lawyers, 
journalists, scholars, soldiers, and statesmen — those in 
every sphere of the nation's activity — came to show their 
esteem for one whose death was felt to be a public calam- 
ity. Among those who grieved most deeply w^ere the 
college classmates, some of whom came long distances to 
be present at these sad last rites. One of them, in placing 
a wreath of remembrance on his bier, said : 

Among the circle of friends who will sorrow that they will 
see his face no more on earth, none, next to his own house- 
hold, will grieve more sincerely for Mr. Phelps than his class- 
mates, who walked and talked with him, laughed and sang 
with him, studied and wrought with him, in the fellowship of 



His Life and Public Services 323 

student life under the elms of New Haven. Alas! that his 
genial smile, his brilliant wit, his courtly manners, and Chris- 
tian spirit will grace our reunions no more. 

Rev. Mr. Eells officiated at the church. The services 
began by the singing of Jesus, Lover of My Soul, by a 
quartette, then there was the reading of an appropriate 
selection of Scripture. This was followed by the solo, / 
Knozo that My Redeemer Liveth. After prayer, the choir 
sang Sun of My Soul, Thou Saviour Dear. Then the 
pastor's words were these : 

It is not as the Statesman, brilliant, worthy, renowned, not 
as the Representative, beloved and honored and wept for by his 
constituents to-day, not as the Judge nor as the Minister, that 
true American Minister of ours — not as such a one to-day have 
we come to do him honor. I am sure that you who have come 
from a distance have been speaking together of the friend that 
he was to you. And those of us who knew some little time 
ago that our friend was to be taken, began telling each other 
how much we should miss him and how much he meant to 
our town and to ourselves. 

And it is that part — the irreparable part of his loss — that we 
have come to speak about, to think about and to honor to-day. 
The Statesman can be praised again, the Minister may do larger 
things than our friend at another time. There are men in 
God's keeping who are being kept for the time of their great 
need, as he was. But the friend and the citizen and the in- 
timate one it is only given to us occasionally to know. When 
they go, our life is poorer till we shall find them again, and put 
them back in their places of honor and of love. 

Thinking over the great characteristics of Mr. Phelps as a 
friend, there was that which came out most prominently, and 
that was his faithfulness. How true it was of him: "Faithful 
in that which is least, faithful also in much." How true, if 
you invert that saying: "Faithful in much, faithful also in the 
least." 

Whether it be as an American, as a young Representative in 
our national Congress, daring to go against his party for the 



324 William Walter Phelps 

sake of an honest and manly conviction, throwing his emphasis 
and doing all that his manly strength could enable him to do 
for his side of the Civil Rights bill, or coming to his home and 
entering the door, unknocked, of his humblest tenant, Mr. 
Phelps was the faithful man, always true to what he thought 
was right, always giving his power, his magnificent attainments 
and intellect and his winning way to what was right. "Faith- 
ful in that which was least; faithful also in much." Faithful 
at home and faithful abroad, faithful to the great men and 
faithful to the humble. 

Mr. Phelps is to be remembered for that large, large faith- 
fulness, and that was possible to him because of his simplicity. 
How genuine and simple he was! There are anecdotes that 
come to your minds, I know, as you sit here, and you remem- 
ber the things that bring them up to your minds and you say: 
"For all of the honor that was given to him, for all of the 
wealth that was his, for all of the position and the friends, Mr. 
Phelps was simple; simple in his tastes, simple in his doings, 
in his words, in his actions." Always that deep simplicity 
that can never be changed. 

We are told that he was always a stanch Republican. So 
he was, in the party way. But Mr. Phelps was democratic 
with that greatest of all democracies, manhood's sympathy 
with manhood. Shakespeare wrote, "None so poor to do him 
reverence." He should have added. None too poor that he 
should reverence. To that is to be attributed his wonderful 
success in a political way. Tlie fact that he could meet men, 
bring them to himself, and hold them to himself, was of great 
value to him in his career. Ever that greatness of character, 
that simplicity, that faithfulness to them and to their interest 
with which he knew how to impress them. 

He was generous in giving, generous not of money only, but 
in the way of giving, generous also of himself. Hardest of all 
things, he knew how to give liberally and upbraid not. It 
would be useless, it would be folly to speak of the great public 
deeds of Mr. Phelps, written as they are on history. It needs 
not the emphasis that we give at such a time as this to the best 
things a man did and the greatest things a man ever said lest 
they be interred with him. He needs no emphatic eulogy at 



His Life and Public Services 325 

this time. But it is that earnest, genuine manliness that we 
shall miss, and it is that that has come to you that has made 
his name especially sad to-day, and it is that that has bound 
men fast to him. It is that which will be always identifying 
us in closer relation with our friend. 

There is one other thing I must not fail to say. We wonder 
why Mr. Phelps left his political career. He had no wonder. 
He loved to be out and at work on his place. He loved to be 
there, caring for the things he loved, and the trees that he 
planted like "the trees of righteousness, round about." How 
he cared for them and how he loved them! He had told some 
of us early in the winter: "I am impatient for the spring to 
come, for I must be about my place and open new roads and 
make it more beautiful." And so he, who, in the love of 
Nature, had communion with her visible forms, spoke her 
varied language. In calm trust he could wrap the drapery of 
his couch about him and lie down to pleasant dreams. God 
take us with him in the morning's dawning. 

The audience was deeply affected by Mr. Eells's re- 
marks. At the conclusion of the address the choir sang 
the hymn. Art Thou Weary? Art Thou Languid f and 
then the benediction was pronounced. 

The casket, accompanied by the pall-bearers, was con- 
veyed directly to Fort Lee and across the river to a rail- 
road station in upper New York City, and from thence 
by special train to Simsbury, Connecticut, the place of 
interment in the massive granite tomb of the Phelps 
family. When the funeral party arrived at Simsbury, a 
large number of citizens of that and other towns were 
gathered at the station and the cemetery to show their 
respect for one whose ancestors were born and lived 
among them. A short funeral service took place at the 
cemetery, conducted by Rev. Mr. Croft, after which the 
body was laid in its final resting-place. There the scholar, 
orator, statesman, and diplomatist, sleeps with his fathers, 
free from the commotion and strife of the world and the 
cares of men. 



26 William Walter Phelps 



To publish the resolutions and testimonials of esteem 
that emanated from clubs, societies, boards of directors 
of corporations, and the many organizations with which 
Mr. Phelps was in some way connected, would be to go 
beyond the limits of this memorial. In the court of 
which he was a judge, besides the other testimonials to 
his worth, his vacant chair was draped in mourning. 

In Berlin the intelligence of the demise of the much 
respected and popular ex-Minister was received with 
marked sadness, especially in diplomatic circles, and 
his memory was fitly honored there in the American 
Church. 

New Jersey was the departed statesman's home, but 
the hundreds of memorials published in the newspapers 
of the whole Union show that he belonged to the nation, 
and it is perhaps better that his character and worth 
should now be measured in this larger perspective — 
removed from the bias and partiality natural to those 
whose ties of intimacy and affection bound them closely 
to him. To them his personality and career could never 
be the objects of cold, calculating criticism; to them his 
rare accomplishments and brilliant achievements were re- 
garded with admiration and cherished with jealous pride; 
to them his unselfish toil and pure life, his manliness and 
sincerity of purpose, his bountiful generosity and mag- 
nanimity were best known and valued; to them he was a 
warm and sympathetic friend whose sunny nature ever 
shed encouragement and gladness and whose loss was 
irreparable. 

As one of those whose friendship with Mr. Phelps was 
long and intimate, the writer of this memoir feels it un- 
necessary that he should look with a critic's eye over 
the life of his friend, or round out this chronicle with 
a closing summary. Instead, he gives the testimony of 
a number of writers who had unusual opportunities to 
observe Mr. Phelps's career from various standpoints. 
A few lines only can be given from each. The selection 



His Life and Public Services 327 

is made from well-known journals and noted journalists 
who have expressed their estimate of Mr. Phelps as a 
man and the value of his life to the world : 

New York Sun. 

Mr. I'helps unaffectedly regarded public office as a 
public trust; and whether he was serving his country or 
his State, in the most conspicuous or the most modest 
station, the principle of his activity was the same. He 
was an honorable, clear-headed, high-minded man; and 
by his untimely death the nation has lost a good citizen. 

Brooklyn Eagle. 

He adhered to the highest standards. He had a taste 
for public life and achieved prominence in it, but not be- 
cause of his millions. The possession of millions enabled 
him to do many things which helped to gratify worthy 
ambition, nor do they explain the regret with which the 
American public will hear of his demise. 

New York Herald. 

He built up a reputation that to-day caused every man, 
woman, and child for miles around his home to speak of 
his death with tear-dimmed eyes. 

New York Mail and Express. 

All who personally knew this generous and gifted man 
on both sides of the Atlantic, — the poor and the rich, the 
toiler and the thinker, will join hands over ocean and 
continent in a common grief. 

New York Tribune. 

He possessed a rich store of affection and sympathy on 
which all who knew him drew at will, with full assurance 
that their drafts would never be dishonored. Not on 
friends alone, but wherever he detected the need of as- 
sistance or of consolation, he bestowed the best gift in his 
keeping. He won in life the only reward he wanted, but 
the tribute of tears which would have grieved him must 
follow him to the grave. 



328 William Walter Phelps 

New York Telegram. 

William Walter Phelps's character and service as a 
statesman belong to his country, to which they are be- 
queathed, and are known to the world which they have 
enriched. The memory of his personality will be cher- 
ished by his friends — and who can number them? 
New York Advertiser. 

The death of William Walter Phelps takes away from us 

a man who can ill be spared. He was an example of the 

highest type of American citizen in public and private 

life, and his career in every respect is worthy of imitation. 

New York Press. 

Of his patriotism and personal worth it is needless to 
speak. These are matters of common knowledge. It is 
enough to say that in his death the United States loses an 
eminent citizen, who in every station he filled reflected 
honor upon the Republic. 
New York Evangelist. 

The descendant of a family distinguished in this country 
from Colonial days, the heir of great wealth and high 
social position, he always looked upon his privileges as so 
many opportunities to serve his fellow-men. 
The Nation. 

It seemed natural to Mr. Phelps to interest himself in 
all matters which concerned the public welfare. 
New York Town Topics. 

Mr. Phelps had every incentive that can be given to a 
man to lead a life of luxurious and artistic ease. He had 
decided artistic and literary tastes and he was never 
vigorous of body, and yet so strong was his sense of what 
a man in his position owed to the community that his 
whole life was one of strenuous exertion in every cause 
and every movement for reform. 
New York Recorder. 

He left no opportunity for good unutilized. 

Brooklyn Standard. 

The high cultivation of Mr. Phelps, his intimate ac- 
quaintance with the history of Europe, his knowledge of 
languages, his familiarity with the manners and customs 



His Life and Public Services 329 

of polite people, the grace there was in his speech and the 
soft touch he knew how to give with a firm hand, qualified 
him for diplomatic service, and when he was Minister to 
Vienna and Berlin, he was not merely an unreproachable 
representative of his country, but one who was honored 
in his individuality and held in high favor at those courts. 

Philadelphia Telegraph, 

The career of Mr. Phelps will be an inspiration to 
every one striving to reach a high ideal. He never low- 
ered his dignity in or out of the House, or in the diplo- 
matic world to please the groundlings. The death of this 
worthy man has been made the subject of unusual com- 
ment among the best-informed journals and public men, 
and there are substantial reasons for this. 

Philadelphia Record. 

By the death of William Walter Phelps the country has 
lost one of its brightest, most active, and best-informed 
public men. Although an ardent Republican, he was 
independent in judgment and action. 

Philadelphia North American. 

His life was dotted by achievements which proved him 
to be a man of exceptional ability. The world is better 
because he lived in it. Would that there were, especially 
among those in active political life, many more like him 
than there are. 

Philadelphia Ledger. 

He was a man of advanced thought. 

Lancaster (Pa.) Examiner. 

If Congress and the executive places of the land had 
more men like Mr. Phelps in public service, the whole 
line of our politics and policies would take such a turn 
that the world would be amazed and our happiness and 
prosperity become the wonder of the age. 

Baltimore Herald. 

Mr. Phelps was at one time a conspicuous Republican 
leader, and as a member of Congress and as the American 
Minister to Austria and Germany he displayed the highest 
qualities of statesmanship and diplomacy. As a citizen 
and as a man Mr. Phelps was beloved by all. 



330 William Walter Phelps 

Newark (N. J.) News. 

The cares and honors of official life wrought no change 
in the personality of Mr. Phelps. He was essentially a 
social man. Ever accustomed to the refinements which 
great wealth brings, and reared in an atmosphere peculiar 
for a certain exclusiveness, this distinguished son of New 
Jersey was always in sympathy with his fellow-man, how- 
ever humble his lot. He was always approachable, always 
ready to lend a sympathetic ear to those in trouble, ever 
solicitous about his friends, and never indifferent to the 
affairs of those who might be classed as not his friends. 

Trenton (N. J.) Gazette. 

The life of strenuous endeavor and self-sacrificing labor 
of William Walter Phelps was in notable contrast to the 
useless life led by some of the favorite sons of fortune. 
He lost nothing in any way by living a life of labor and 
usefulness instead of giving himself up to the indolence 
of wealth. And he had the respect and admiration of the 
world. 

Elizabeth (N. J.) Herald. 

Very few public men have left a grander record behind 
them than that bequeathed to posterity by William Walter 
Phelps. Editors all over the land, of every known politi- 
cal hue, sect, race, or condition, have nothing but eulogy 
for the departed scholar and statesman. 

Paterson (N. J.) Press. 

One of his characteristics was his habit of never speak- 
ing ill of dignitaries or any one else. Very rarely was 
Mr. Phelps ever heard to speak a word in derogation of 
man or woman. A dash of sub-acid persitlage, or gleam 
of polished satire, was the nearest he would approach to 
punishment even of a personal or political adversary. 

Sussex (N. J.) Independent. 

In the death of Mr. Phelps this nation has lost one of 
its grandest sons. He was a large-hearted, cultured 
gentleman, tender and sympathetic as a woman, lavish in 
his benevolence, always good to the poor and kind to the 
unfortunate, with ever an encouraging word for all things 
for the betterment of mankind. 



His Life and Public Services 33^ 

Paterson (N. J.) Call. 

The world is made poorer by his removal, but he leaves 
behind an example worthy of emulation — that of an up- 
right and pure-minded citizen, whose creed might be 
summed up in the few words "Do unto others as you 
would that they should do unto you." 

Chicago Record. 

Some of his speeches stand as models of scholarship, 
logic, and oratory. But it was in diplomacy that he made 
his greatest success. He had great tact, was shrewd and 
accurate in his penetration of other men's minds and 
motives, and had a power of persuasion that was seldom 
surpassed. Prince Bismarck once said that Mr. Phelps 
was the most agreeable and the cleverest American he had 
ever known. The great German Chancellor never liked 
nor praised weak men, whether they were for him or 
against him. 

Chicago Herald. 

His regard for what he deemed the right separated him 
from his party on several occasions. He could not be 
whipped into line against his convictions, and his detrac- 
tors unjustly charged him with Pharisaism when he was 
really conscientious. 

Cincinnati Gazette. 

He had a vast store of varied and singularly accurate 
inteUigence, and there were constant surprises that Mr. 
Phelps should have known so much that would seem to 
be so remote from his life and studies. 

Indianapolis Journal. 

As a lawyer, Congressman, statesman, and diplomat, he 
made for himself a prominent place in American histor)'. 

Bloomington (111.) Paragraph. 

His liberal education and manners, and his thorough 
knowledge of foreign affairs, made him one of the most 
capable ambassadors that ever represented our country 
at a foreign court. 

Toledo (Ohio) Blade. 

His life was one of useful public service. 



332 William Walter Phelps 

Louisville Journal. 

Mr. Phelps belonged rather to the early days of the 
Republic than to this present era of half-made public 
men. He was a scholar without affectation, and a pub- 
licist and economist of extraordinary etjuipment. There 
were men more noisily notable in public affairs than 
William Walter Phelps, none of more sterling worth, 
or of more commanding talents, or of purer life. 
Mobile Register. 

He was a rich man in whose hands riches became a 
blessing to others. 
Danville (Ky.) Advocate. 

His contributions to the literature of political economy, 
both on the floor of the House of Representatives and 
through the public press, always commanded attention, 
even from his political enemies. 
Nashville American. 

It may be truly said that honors were thrust upon him. 
Charleston (S. C.) Courier. 

A statesman in the true sense of the word. 
Kansas City Star. 

No accusation was ever made against him affecting his 
personal integrity. He served his country faithfully at 
home and abroad. 
San Francisco Call. 

« 

He was an encyclopedia of information on all subjects. 
The life of Mr. Phelps is the best answer to the 
assertion — which is often made in circles not well in- 
formed — that in this country politics is so dirty a trade 
that men of culture cannot engage in it. 
San Francisco Chronicle. 

The qualities of statesmanship so needed during a criti- 
cal period in our history were possessed and exercised by 
him in a marked degree. 
Oregonian (Portland, Ore.). 

He was manly and strong and a true friend to humanity. 
Seattle (Wash.) Post-Intelligencer. 

He was an able lawyer, and his talents and learning 
made him the best Ambassador to Berlin we ever had. 



His Life and Public Services 333 

Schenectady (N. Y.) Union. 

The more he learned of foreign government, the greater 
he loved his country. 
Auburn (N. Y.) Advertiser. 

Mr. Phelps was a true-born American citizen. He 
always had the interests of his nation at heart. His death 
will be mourned by this nation and all other nations. 
Elmira Advertiser. 

Few men have attained more natural prominence in the 
public service. 
Troy Times. 

His death is a State and a national loss. 

Albany Journal. 

He represented the best type of American manhood. 
Syracuse Standard. 

He had, among others, that splendid trait, a gift for 
friendship. 

Binghamton Republican. 

We cannot have too many practical politicians of his 
type. 

Poughkeepsie Star. 

Would that New Jersey and the country at large had 
many more such men. 

Albany Express. 

There never was a fair fighter who failed to like William 
Walter Phelps better after crossing swords with him. 

Syracuse Herald. 

He did what so few men ever do — made the most of the 
capacities with which he was endowed and of the influences 
placed in his hand. 

Utica Observer. 

In everything he was an enthusiast. His Republican- 
ism was intense. His friendships were the same. So was 
his patriotism. He loved his country devotedly. 

Oswego Times. 

He honored his country by his presence in her legisla- 
tive halls, and by his services in her behalf in ministerial 
circles abroad, as he also honored friendship. 



334 William Walter Phelps 

Troy Press. 

His ties of friendship were always enduring. 
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. 

He was one of the most useful public men of his time. 
A man of noble aims and sterling patriotism. 
Springfield (Mass.) Republican. 

The respect of men came to him justly and in ample 
measure. 
Boston Advertiser. 

A noble man. His memory will be an inspiration. 
Portland (Me.) Advertiser. 

A prominent and influential figure in the public affairs 
of America. 

Boston Globe. 

Mr. Phelps was a natural orator and never liked to 
make set speeches. Whenever he spoke in Congress it 
was ujjon important matters and he was always listened 
to with close attention. 

Boston Herald. 

Mr. Phelps belonged to that class of wealthy men in 
this country who go into politics with a lofty purpose be- 
fore them. 

London (England) Star. 

The news of the death of Mr. Phelps has caused great 
regret in the diplomatic circles of London, where he is 
remembered as a courteous and able United States Am- 
bassador to European courts. 

Mr. Dingley, in the Lewiston (Me.) Journal. 

The writer, who was in Berlin in the winter of 1889-90, 
bears witness to the influence there of Minister Phelps. 
It is probably not too much to say that, since Benjamin 
Franklin, this Government has been represented in Eu- 
rope by no man so well adapted to represent a republic 
to a monarchy as William Walter Phelps. 

Eugene Field. 

He was always strong to sustain the weak. Struggling 
men received from him a helping hand, but his charities 
were never on parade. 



His Life and Public Services 335 

Carl Schurz. 

I never could think of him without the greatest esteem 
for his brilliant gifts and the high qualities of his character, 
and without a deep affection for the loveliness of his 
nature. 
Charles Emory Smith. 

His talent for public life was of a rare and high order. 
He had elements of real greatness. When he entered 
Congress, he at once took high rank as a parliamentary 
orator. His style was lucid, epigrammatic, and incisive. 
He was sure in his grasp of principles, and his perceptions 
were as quick as a woman's intuitions. Had he remained 
a longer period in the House or gone to the Senate, he 
would have had an enduring place as one of the foremost 
parliamentary speakers of our days. His diplomatic life 
was no less successful. He was eminently fitted for that 
atmosphere. 
Whiteiaw Reid. 

No man had more, or more widely cultured, or warmer 
friends; and the whole country, in all sections, and in all 
parties, will regret the loss of a public servant of distin- 
guished ability, of the most transparent and courageous 
integrity, and the most high-minded and generous public 
spirit. 
Murat Halstead. 

Mr. Phelps has been before the country for more than 
twenty years as a man of national reputation. The 
countrv will honor him with long remembrance, enduring 
affection, and sincere regrets. But one had to know him 
well to estimate truly the generosity of his nature, the 
geniality of his temper, the manliness of his intellect, and 
the chivalry that was an inspiration in his brave and 
beautiful life. 



SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES 



337 



SOUND CURRENCY 

Speech of Mr. Phelps, of New Jersey, in the House of Represen- 
tatives, April I, 1874 

[The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 1572) en- 
titled " An act to amend the several acts providing a national currency and 
to establish free banking and for other purposes."] 

Mr. Phelps said: 

Mr. Speaker., we are bound to give the people of these 
United States a sound currency. We are bound to give them 
specie payments; for only gold, or a credit based on gold, is 
a sound currency. We are bound, whether we be Liberals, Re- 
publicans, or Democrats, by express promise; we are bound 
by the provisions of a law, the first ever signed by our Chief 
Magistrate; we are bound by the oath we took as members of 
this House to support the Constitution; we are bound by the 
conventions of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Baltimore, which 
pledged the three great parties to "speedy resumption " ; we 
are bound by the Act of March, 1869, which "solemnly pledged 
the public faith to make provision at the earliest practicable 
period for the redemption of the United States notes in coin" ; 
we are bound by the Constitution, which was formed " to pro- 
mote the general welfare." Can we better provide for the 
general welfare than by giving to the people a uniform, stable 
currency ? 

For the general welfare, for the interests of other classes, 
others may speak. Let me to-day speak for the interests of 
labor — the labor of the farm and of the shop — 

FOR THE POOR MAN 

I believe, and I think I can show, that while the moral 
evils resulting from a depreciated currency fall uniformly, the 

339 



340 William Walter Phelps 

material ill, the real suffering and loss, fall upon the laborer 
and the farmer. The capitalist and merchant, in the resources 
of varied exchanges and varied investments, may adjust and 
shift the loss; the poor man receives it all. Wall Street, and 
Beacon Street, and Chestnut Street may escape; the farm and 
the workshop, never. Therefore I urge to-day the resumption 
of specie payments in the name of the farmer and mechanic. 

I ask a sound currency for those whose ploughs rust in the 
furrow; for those who darken the streets of Paterson with their 
patient waitings. 

I SPEAK FOR MV OWN PEOPLE 

And let no man smile that I speak for those whose wants I best 
know and most feel: 1 speak /or them, not /o them. Shall I 
tell them of sufferings they have felt? Shall I point them to the 
silent forge, and spindle, and loom? They have lived and 
moved among them all this dreary winter, as men can live and 
move, even among the silent monuments of departed life. 
They ask for a sound currency; as their representative, I ask 
for it in their name. They have waited, they are still waiting, 
with patience. So far, they have asked for bread, and their 
Government has given them a stone; they have asked for 
money, their Government has given them a rag. 

Mr. Speaker, I could spend much time in proving financial 
truths that were never disputed before this year of our Lord. 
Why should I? Shall I put up a man of straw, to knock him 
down? Shall I tell truths that the theory and experience of 
the world have established? Could I write them better than 
Smith, Ricardo, Say, Rice, and Bagehot? Can I speak them 
better than Jefferson, and Benton, and Webster, and Clay? 
If there is a man who believes there is any other basis for a 
sound currency than gold, and who maintains that belief in 
the face of the world's testimony and the world's experience, 
I cannot convert him; I will not attempt it. 

It seems to me that most of the confusion of thought and 
expression that aj)]:)ears in this discussion is the result of in- 
accuracy of terms. The words are used inaccurately. The 
confusion is one, not in the subject, not in the mind that 



His Life and Public Services 341 

grasps it, but in the terminology. Give that strict definition 
to terms, give that strict use of terms when defined, which 
rules in other sciences, and all confusion must give way to 
order and harmony. In the great process of exchange there 
are two parts, two functions. For these two functions two 
different instruments are needed. Let us give these different 
instruments different names, and carefully mamtain the dis- 
tinction. What is money? It is the measure of value. It is 
the instrument devised to transact the first step in an exchange. 
It is the commodity used to estimate the relative value of other 
commodities. 

Before we can exchange commodities we must know what 
is their real value. We must take a commodity of fixed value, 
and, dividing it into units, make these represent the ratio which 
other commodities bear to each other. This measure of value 
is money. 

THIS MEASURE OF VALUE IS GOLD 

Why? Because gold has the mechanical qualities for such 
a measure. It is divisible and indestructible. It has, too, 
a universal and stable value. Now money must have value, 
because it is used to measure value. If we wished to measure 
the length of commodities, we would take a measure that had 
length. Did we wish to measure weight, we would take as a 
measure a commodity that had weight. So when we measure 
values we must have a measure that has value. And gold is 
the only article that has a universal and stable value. Uni- 
versal, for here civilization and barbarism, the past and the 
present, meet. Abraham counted shekels in the first recorded 
bargain, and William exacted from France a coin subsidy. 
The Pacific islander clamors for gold; and for gold the poet 
laureate of Great Britain sells his muse. "But," says an ob- 
jector, "have not other commodities a universal value? How 
with wheat? Abraham gathered wheat before shekels. Glid- 
den's mummy unfolded wheat mixed with gold, and your 
islander sometimes says 'wheat' first, 'gold' afterward." All 
of which is true. But the demand for wheat is finite, and 
can be supplied. When supplied, the price falls, for there is 
a glut. Not so with gold. The demand is infinite; there can 



342 William Walter Phelps 

be no glut. It grows on what it feeds. The Incas, when their 
eyes were dazzled with its ubiquitous sheen, schemed for it; 
and our richest grangers — most virtuous of men — are still 
Olivers, asking for more. And gold has a stable value; not 
perfectly so (for I have heard of California and Australia), 
but more stable than any other commodity. Hence for our 
money, for our measure of value, we take gold. 

But besides money we hear of currency. What is that? 
Money was the measure of value. 

WHAT IS CURRENCY ? 

Currency is the medium of exchange. It is the instrument 
that performs the second process in exchange. After money 
has fixed the relative values of commodities, currency makes 
the exchange. And what is currency? What does it consist 
of? 

Mainly of credit, — credit in one of its many forms, draft 
and note, bill and check and account. So we have two dif- 
ferent instruments, and two sets of names for them; one set is, 
the measure of value — gold, money; the other is, the medium 
of exchange — paper credit, currency. 

And here is the only opportunity for mistake in keeping this 
distinction. Money is the measure of value — is gold. Cur- 
rency is the medium of exchange — is paper representing gold. 
But as a principal can do what its representative can — money, 
gold, can also discharge the second process of exchange, can 
also be currency. It can perform the two functions. But 
when money performs the second function, makes the ex- 
change, it is currency. Hence a deal of confusion. From 
this we escape by bearing always in mind that, while money is 
currency, currency, except the small part which is gold, is not 
money. And perhaps just here it is well to say that no bul- 
lion ist, no hard-money man, as far as I know, wants to use 
gold for currency. We want to use gold for money, for the 
measure of values. We want to use paper as currency, as the 
medium of exchange. In other words, we think gold the best 
measure of value; paper the best instrument of exchange, the 
best currency, l^ut it must be paper that represents value, 



His Life and Public Services 343 

that represents gold, and can be turned into it. Why, then, 
are we dissatisfied with our present currency, which is paper? 
For the reason that it is not real currency, it does not repre- 
sent value. It was not born, it was made. 

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF A SOUND CURRENCY? 

How does it get its birth? It is born in some transaction, 
and represents some value, money or property, which the 
transaction concerned. This is truest of the lowest and high- 
est forms of credit. Take the earliest conception of currency. 
It is in the very infancy of trade before money is yet used as 
a measure of value. My friend has a skiff on the Hudson; I 
have a skiff on the Potomac. We wish to exchange. My 
friend takes my skiff. He gives me a writing which empowers 
the bearer to take his. This writing is 

A DRAFT, 

the simplest form of credit, the first piece of currency. And 
in the market any man who wants the skiff, or knows the value 
of it, will accept it as currency. This draft was born in a 
transaction — the exchange of skiffs; and represents value — 
property, the Hudson skiff, which exists to redeem it. 

Take a step further in the development of currency. Money 
is now used as a measure of value, and exchanges are to that 
degree simplified. My friend this time wishes to buy my 
house. We fix the price. He has no money, but I trust him. 
He gives me a written promise to pay. Here is another form 
of credit. I walk off with another kind of currency — 

THE PROMISSORY NOTE 

This note, too, was born in a transaction — the purchase and 
sale of the house. And the note, too, represents property, 
value; for it represents the house which my friend owns, and 
which still exists as a means of payment. If my friend, when 
the note falls due, has the house, he can, by sale or mortgage, 
pay it. But suppose my friend has sold the house before the 
note falls due. If he sold it, he sold it for something — money 



344 William Walter Phelps 

or currency or property, — and he holds the money or draft or 
property in place of the house and the representative of his 
note, and ready for its redemption. Just as the skiff stood 
behind the draft, the house stands behind the note. 

But before my friend's note fell due, I needed a still higher 
kind of currency, one capable of wider circulation. Strangers 
refuse it; so I go to my bank. The bank will discount if I 
will take the bank's promise. The bank's promise passes as 
money; so I take it. This time I go out with another form 
of credit — another kind of currency — 

THE BANK-NOTE 

This bank-bill came into being in a transaction, and repre- 
sents value — the house of my friend, which still stands ready 
to furnish the money to pay the note, which pays the bank-bill. 

So under natural laws currency in all forms comes into the 
volume of circulation, as the result of transactions, as the 
representative of value. Its volume, therefore, regulates 
itself. There is as much as there are transactions, as there 
are values, and no more 

But there comes a 

DISTURBING ELEMENT 

The Government injects it into this natural stream fed by 
the business of the country. Government issues its promises, 
not as the representative of gold, not as the representative of 
property, but as the representative of debt. Natural currency 
comes as the representative of wealth — the Government cur- 
rency as the representative of poverty. 

Why, then, do not the laws of trade eject it, this foreign 
element — this bastard currency? They would. Men would 
refuse to take it. Nature would cure herself. But supreme 
sovereignty interferes and forces it upon the people. The 
people submit because they are law-abiding. 

"But," says the friend of the greenback, "you argue as if 
the Government gave away its currency. This is not true. 
The Government received value for it." Certainly; the 
Government received property for its notes; but the property 



His Life and Public Services 345 

was bought for consumption or destruction. The projjerty 
immediately upon its transfer ceased to exist as the means for 
paying the notes. If I sold a citizen a cargo of grain and he 
gave me his note for it, the cargo of grain in his hands, or 
some one else's, exists as the means of paying it. If I sell the 
cargo to the Government and take its note, the Government 
takes the grain and distributes the grain amongst its soldiers, 
and it is consumed, and no grain is left to pay the notes, nor 
can it be sold to furnish other means of paying them. In the 
case of the Government note the property perished, leaving 
the note unprotected. In the case of the private note the 
property remained to produce the means for payment. This 
examination of the nature of credit, of the origin of currency, 

SHOWS ITS PROPER LIMITS 

Credit can act beneficently till it reaches the consumer; 
there it should stop. Bankers and merchants are simply agents 
for the exchange of commodities, and as such they may safely 
promise to pay with merchandise in existence, not for their 
own consumption, but for sale; and thus they may conduct 
their operations forever without failure, through the various 
degrees of subdivision until the actual consumer is reached 
through the retail dealer. Here the point is reached where 
credit is most pernicious and should be avoided. The prom- 
ises issued by the consumer, whether it be the Government or 
the laborer, are not from their nature currency, and any effort 
to force their circulation produces only confusion and loss. 
But this is what our Government did when, in the stress of 
war, it issued its promises against property, which it consumed 
or destroyed. Hence came the greenback, fruitful source of 
all our woe3. This increased the currency beyond its natural 
limits. It was in excess. There was more currency than 
there was property for it to represent, and 

THERE WAS A DEPRECIATION 

Let me not waste time to chronicle the now familiar effects 
of a depreciated and irredeemable currency. It is always in 
excess. This excess stimulates extravagance and speculation. 



34^ William Walter Phelps 

There is constant temptation to be rid of a currency whose 
value is uncertain. Use it now, it is worth something; retain 
it until to-morrow, it may be worth nothing. And so the spirit 
of the gambler enters into the heart of the nation, and after 
extravagance come speculation, crime, moral and material 
ruin. To chronicle what of this moral and material ruin is 
general, I do not pause. I pass this to show that the worst 
evils of an unsound currency fall upon the poor. 

The harm of wrong legislation in finance, as in taxation, 
falls and rests at last upon them. As a direct consequence of 
depreciated money, prices fluctuate, so the man who buys 
cannot tell for what he will sell, or what his money will be 
worth when he gets his pay. Against this uncertainty the rich 
man who sells can insure himself by adding a percentage to 
his price. The poor man who buys, buys to consume, not to 
sell again, and pays this percentage out of his poverty. The 
rich man adds to the price of his commodities the premium 
on gold at each rise, and by continual exchanges adjusts or 
shifts the loss. The poor man has but one thing to exchange 
— his labor, — and does not know the hourly, daily, or weekly 
rise of gold; and if he does, he cannot daily, hourly, weekly, 
or even monthly add it to his wages. He cannot readily make 
new contracts for his labor, and, unfortunately, it is the only 
contract he can ever make. So the premium on gold reaches 
his wages last of all. 

Certainly, then, an 

IRREDEEMABLE CURRENCY IS NOT FOR THE POOR MAN 

If it is for the benefit of any, it is for the rich man and for the 
speculator. The more rich the man, the more desperate the 
speculator; the more easily he avoids the losses, the more cer- 
tainly he profits by the fluctuations. Increase the number and 
variety of transactions, and you increase the opportunities to 
adjust or shift the burdens of a fluctuating currency. The 
poor man, who has nothing to sell but his labor, and who has 
everything to buy — lodging, food, clothing, — finds his labor 
receiving only the premium on gold. This is bad for him at 
one end, and it is ecjually bad at the other; for, for his sup- 
port, he pays, in each case, something beyond the premium. 



His Life and Public Services 347 

And this brings us to the general principle, that the premium 
on gold does not accurately measure the advance of prices, 
except in those articles that we export. In all other articles, 
prices rise beyond the gold premium, and this rise is due to 
the percentage added on each exchange, to insure the seller 
against subsequent depreciation of the money in which he 
shall be paid. 

Naturally the increase in price will be least in those com- 
modities which pass directly from ])roducer to consumer, and 
greatest in those which are subjected to most frequent trans- 
fers. When Mr. Low buys his tea in China, he pays for it in 
gold. The Chinese as yet are not inteUigent enough to accept 
"the best currency the world ever saw." When the tea is in 
his warehouse,— freight, duties, and exchange all paid,— he 
fixes the price. He adds to cos-t the usual percentage of profit 
and the premium on gold; but he does not stop here. He 
sells on time, and before the time expires gold may rise 2 or 3 
per cent. He does not think it will rise so much; but it may, 
and, as he sees no propriety in running any risk, he adds 3 per 
cent, and the jobber gets Mr. Low's tea into Chicago at a cost 
of 3 per cent, above the premium on gold, and when my friend 
from Kansas stopped over last November and bought his 
family chests to send to Wyandotte, the Chicago merchant 
said: "This M. C. will not remit before the 5th of next month; 
by that time some more of the $44,000,000 will be out, and the 
premium on gold, instead of being 6, as it is now, may be 10 
or 12; I will add 5 per cent, to guard against loss." So when 
this tea reaches the little grangers at Wyandotte, though gold 
is up only 10 per cent., tea is up 18 per cent.; 3 per cent, 
added by the New York importer, and 5 per cent, added by 
the Chicago jobber. So in any article, especially manufac- 
tured articles, where the materials have passed through many 
hands, we shall have the price naturally raised far above the 
gold premium. 
And this is 

WHY THE FARMER, THE WESTERN FARMER, SUFFERS 

more from a depreciated currency than any one else, except 
the poor man who has only his own labor to sell. Why? 



348 William Walter Phelps 

Because the western farmer gets for his produce only the price 
of the foreign market. They raise and sell cotton, pork, beef, 
corn, wheat, cheese. The price of these in New York is 
always the price in Liverpool, less the price of transportation. 
It must be so. If the price in Liverpool were more, we should 
export, or raise the home price. If the price in Liverpool 
were less, we should cease to carry produce there and the sur- 
plus accumulating in New York would force the New York 
price down to the Liverpool level. This is the theory, and 
this is the fact, that Liverpool fixes the price of our farm pro- 
ducts. "But," say the friends of an irredeemable currency, 
"the farmer gets his price in gold and he gets the benefit of 
the premium; how, then, is he hurt?" He is hurt because 
the depreciation of our currency does not measure the increase 
in the prices of the commodities he buys. Say gold is no; 
say lo marks the depreciation of our dollar, and the farmer 
gets a gold dollar and changes it into^i.io, will his $i.io buy 
what it once did? No; rent, clothing, food, tools, horses, tea, 
coffee, all have advanced beyond the gold premium, and we 
have seen the reason. Each dealer added a percentage to 
guard against the loss of an uncertain currency. 
And what is the 

RESULT TO THE FARMER ? 

He gets for his produce, in paper money, what he got before 
the war, plus the premium on gold; but everything he buys 
he buys at an advance greater than the premium. Wheat in 
Chicago before the war was $i.io per bushel, good sugar 9 
cents per pound. Now, in the same market, wheat brings 
$1.25 and the same sugar 11 j4 cents. The price of the wheat 
shows the premium of gold, the price of the sugar shows the 
premium of gold plus an advance of 12 percent. The im- 
porter and jobber have not only charged the premium on gold 
to the consumer, they have also taken from him an extravagant 
rate for shielding them from further loss. So here the fluctu- 
ating currency was a source of wealth to the rich trader, a 
source of poverty to the farmer and consumer. All the manu- 
facturers and merchants have made themselves their own 
insurers. They have charged the premiums, which they 



His Life and Public Services 349 

themselves fixed, and tlic laborer and farmer have had to pay 
them. 

It is not the worst of the farmer's case that his bushel of 
wheat shall not bring him as much sugar, as many books, as 
before. It costs him, alas! more to grow it. He pays more 
for land, for service, for tools, for horses — more than before. 

And yet the perpetuation of a financial system which robs 
the laborer and the farmer to fill the coffers of the merchant 
and the speculator is a policy urged by those who pretend to 
be the enemies of the rich and the friends of the poor. 

In the name, then, of the laborer who consumes, and the 
farmer who produces, whose welfare is the welfare of the 
country, and whose welfare is sapped by a dishonest currency, 
give us a currency which has gold for its basis. This much at 
least we can do. We cannot do all; we cannot cure 

ALL THE EVILS OF THE FINANCL\L WORLD 

Men will still fail; panics will still blast; Indianapolis will still 
want money; corn raised too far from market will still warm 
the disappointed husbandman; railroad robbers will again 
drive their four-in-hands; the wicked will flourish; the good 
will pine; Lazarus will lie outside; Dives will feast inside — in 
a word, man will still be human whatever currency triumphs. 
But with a redeemable currency we can make fewer the fail- 
ures, fewer the panics, fewer the Lazaruses, fewer the Diveses, 
less the suffering, less the vice. Yes, I admit with it — even 
with an honest currency — 

WE SHALL STILL HAVE PANICS 

A world which does its business on a credit basis cannot escape 
them; and this basis is one which grows wider as the world 
grows older. 

The demands on credit must increase; for the world does 
not contain money enough to effect its business, and credit in 
one of its multiform shapes must continue to be the principal 
instrument of e.xchange. Only in rude barbarism does money 
discharge all the functions of e.xchange; and as civilization 



350 William Walter Phelps 

increases the business of the world, credit by bill, by note, by 
check, by book account, is forced into greater exercise. 

How large a part credit plays in the business of our own 
country let the accomplished gentleman from Ohio tell, who 
long ago, by careful investigation, obtained and recorded the 
figures. From him we learn that that part of the currency, 
which is money, really so or legalized — in other words, the legal- 
tender of a nation, — bears an insignificant ratio in the grand 
total of exchanges. He found that the history of the 

CLEARING-HOUSE ASSOCIATION 

of the New York banks showed that an average of 4 per cent, 
in legal money was employed. In an existence of seventeen 
years, the association had made exchanges amounting to $273,- 
661,000,000, and used $11,207,000,000. 

IN THE REDEMPTION BANKS 

he found the percentage 12. i per cent. In six business days 
these banks effected exchanges of $154,959,665, and used 
$18,770,708. 

IN CERTAIN COUNTRY BANKS 

fairly selected from different States and Territories as having 
transactions nearest to the farming j)opulation, where credit is 
less generally used, he found the percentage 28 of money to 
100 of receipts. The receipts for six days were $2,102,488, 
the legal money $599,328. 

This was the humble part played by legal money in our own 
bank exchanges. What the exact percentage is in the sections 
without banking facilities it would be difficult to say. There 
it varies and in different nations it varies; but it is always 
small. In London, Bagehot assumes the ratio of legal-tender 
to total circulation is 3 per cent. In New York, as a whole, 
it is properly assumed at 5 per cent. In other words, out of 
transactions involving $100,000,000, not more than $5,000,000 
of coin, greenbacks, and bank-notes are used. At least ninety- 
five out of every one hundred millions is paid by checks, drafts. 



His Life and Public Services 351 

bills, and the like. And small as this ratio is, as a more ad- 
vanced civilization forces new inventions to add to the many 
forms credit can assume, the future will probably see that that 
part of the currency which is money, will, as the years go by, 
bear a smaller and smaller ratio to the whole amount of com- 
mercial transactions. 

Try to realize this — the extent to which our people carry on 
their transactions on mere promises to pay, their commerce, 
their manufactures, their trade, all their industries, with money 
to pay for only fifteen one-hundredths of their business. And 
yet this vast system of credit stands the strain, this complicate 
industry goes on for years, until its delicate support is broken. 
That support is trust: the trust my friend has that his bank 
will pay his check; the trust I have that my friends debited 
in my ledger for money loaned will pay when I ask them. 
This enables the bank-check and the book credit, or any cur- 
rency, to take the place of money. 

When this support is broken, when citizens begin to doubt 
the solvency of banks and bankers, and neighbors the solvency 
of each other, 

THEN COMES A PANIC — 

the child of distrust — and all, refusing every form of credit, 
note, or draft, or bill, or check, demand money. Currency is 
valueless; the delicate machinery of credit which the ages 
have perfected ceases to work, and man, in the frenzy of dis- 
trust, remitted to his original barbarism, will take only gold. 
Until the panic is hopeless, if law interferes, they will obey it, 
and take the legal money, which the law enforces. If the 
panic is hopeless, the creditor, doubting the ultimate solvency 
even of the Government, refuses its legal-tender, and peace 
comes only in the utter ruin of bankruptcy. The trouble is 
the people have asked fifteen millions of legalized money to 
do the work of one hundred millions, and it cannot. 

This shows the cause of panics — the possibility in the human 
heart suddenly to lose its normal trust in its kind. And the 
human heart is the same and will act to the same causes, 
whether the legal money is gold or whether it is paper. We 
shall be liable to panics always; for we can never make the 



352 William Walter Phelps 

exchanges of our present civilization for money, but must 
always use credit mainly. And when we use credit, and the 
human heart remains as it is, we are always subject to the in- 
cursion of that distrust which will suddenly palsy the activity 
of currency, and panic will reign. All we claim is that the 
liability to this incursion of distrust, this panic, is naturally 
greater under an irredeemable currency. The evils of an 
irredeemable currency, to which I have already alluded, tend 
strongly to produce it, tend strongly to aggravate and perpetu- 
ate it when produced. The reign of paper money gives us 
speculation and extravagance. Both use up money rapidly, 
extravagance consumes, speculation wastes it, or buries it in 
unprofitable investment. This twofold drain is felt, and a 
people whose morale has been sapped by an artificial prosperity 
are forced to look about them. They recognize and exagger- 
ate consequences which they have no courage to endure; and 
in speedy loss of hope and faith they rush to save all that to 
them has worth — money. And the loss of trust, which leads 
men temporarily to despise credit and seek only gold, is panic. 
Paper money has produced it; paper money will aggravate it. 
Had we a redeemable currency, a currency that the solvent 
world has, the insane want of money would be met. The gold 
of a thrifty population, ever looking for the most profitable 
market, would come to our relief. The profits offered would 
overcome all obstacles and drain the world, were it necessary. 
But it is not. It is an unreasoning panic. The arrival of a 
little gold, the news of it on a westering ship, breaks the spell, 

AND CONFIDENCE REIGNS AGAIN 

Where we have a national currency of our own — the best in 
the world — there is no such remedy, no such cure. The 
national issue, if it has any value, has a limit. The people 
know that limit, know that the limit fixed for a normal condi- 
tion of the market is inadequate now. And if it has no limit, 
the most ignorant know it is worthless, its legality fails to give 
it currency, and the national issue disappears with the Con- 
tinental scrip, the French assignaf, the Texas red-back, the 
South American shin-plaster. 



His Life and Public Services 353 

Specie payments will not prevent panics, but they will retard 
and cure them. 

And here, too, is the folly of an argument based on a sup- 
position that governments can tell how much legal money is 
needed for a nation's wants. The per capita theory is a vain 
one; for the amount shifts from day to day, from market to 
market. In normal condition, New York needs five millions 
of legal money to do the work of one hundred millions; in 
times of panic, New York needs one hundred millions of legal 
money to do the work of one hundred millions. What amount 
shall the anxious legislator manufacture for New York's wants? 
Shall he make it one hundred millions? Then it will take two 
dollars to buy a ten-penny loaf when there is no panic. Shall 
he make it five millions? If the panic continues he can buy 
his ten-penny loaf for half a cent. I would counsel the anxious 
legislator under these circumstances to hold off, and let God 
and nature take care of man's wants. 

Without further discussion let us assume: 

1. That gold is the only basis of a sound currency. 

2. That paper redeemable in gold is the best currency. 

3. That currency must always perform the larger part of the 
world's exchanges. 

4. That currency is that form of credit which gets its birth 
in business transactions, and represents an existing value — 
either gold or property. 

5. That currency, untrammelled by governmental interfer- 
ence, regulates its own volume. 

6. That governmental credit, not representing gold in the 
Treasury, not issued against property in existence, but against 
property consumed or destroyed, is a bastard currency; and, 
as a foreign and superfluous element, dei)reciates the currency 
of the people. 

7. That a depreciated currency inflicts moral ill upon all 
classes, but throws the material loss and suffering mainly on 
the farmer and laborer. 

8. That a depreciated currency tends to create and aggravate 
panics. 

9. That it is our duty to legislate in the direction of specie 

payments. 
23 



354 William Walter Phelps 

Now we come to the 

BILL OF THE COMMITTEE 

I break no confidence in saying it is the bill of no member — it 
is literally the bill of the committee — the result of conflicting 
views. A part of its provisions I like, a part I do not. But 
I am willing, as a whole, to take it. I believe there is more 
good in it than harm. It points and moves in the direction of 
specie payment. That is something. It tells the people we 
mean to be honest, when we can afford it; that we will make 
no more forced loans — issue no more greenbacks; but will by 
degrees redeem them all. Perhaps, after all, it is not safe to 
go faster. 

But with so strong a motive I would dare the risk of proclaim- 
ing resumption as the chief glory of our Centennial; relying 
upon our ability to borrow sufficient gold by the sale of our 
bonds. It would be the brightest star in Philadelphia's galaxy. 
I believe that gold enough, without panic, could be obtained in 
the European market to answer the demands of a graduated 
resumption, which should be complete on the Fourth of July 
1876. The sufferings, in my opinion, occasioned by such re- 
sumption would be slight compared with those following a 
depreciated currency. 

But in this opinion a majority of my colleagues of the com- 
mittee do not share, and the result is the 

COMPROMISE OF THE EIGHTH SECTION 

which provides for the gradual reduction of the amount of 
legal-tender. That method was selected as the one involving 
the least distress. The contraction is gradual and slow. At 
the beginning the currency is not contracted at all. The 
quantity of national notes is not changed. A portion of them 
are changed in quality, are of a higher value; but this value 
is not for some time appreciable, and to the end they can be 
used as legal-tender. For the two millions each month with- 
drawn, two millions are immediately substituted. These two 
millions discharge all the functions of the original greenback, 



His Life and Public Services 355 

although they have the further merit of carrying the promise 
of repayment in gold at a definite time. 

We have, therefore, until two years have elapsed, still four 
hundred millions of promises out; but of these promises two 
millions monthly are assuming a definite and respectable char- 
acter. For two years, then, there can be no contraction of 
the volume. But will not the gold greenback be hoarded? 
Yes, by the banks, who, being forced to keep a reserve in 
greenbacks, will release their paper greenbacks, and use these 
instead. The banks need one hundred and forty millions for 
their reserve, so that the banks will furnish a depository for 
more than the fifty millions which can be issued for two years. 
After two years there will be contraction by the amount of two 
millions for each month. In the meantime, should private 
citizens compete with the banks for the gold greenback, which 
is scarcely probable until the reserve of the banks is supplied, 
the gold greenbacks in private hands furnish a slight elasticity 
to the currency which may have its use. 

THE GOLD GREENB.\CK 

at the issue is worth scarcely more than the paper greenback; 
but as it approaches the time of payment increases rapidly in 
value, so that the tendency constantly increases to withdraw 
it from circulation. But, as it is still money, a great demand 
for money increasing its rate would force it into market again. 

Let us not forget, in examining this method, that the action 
taken is final and cannot, by indirection, be repealed by the 
Government. The dishonored and indefinite promises that 
have been withdrawn are cancelled, never to be reissued. In 
their place are promises so explicit and definite that no Con- 
gress would dare to break them. Two millions of irredeem- 
able paper is destroyed each month, and cannot, except by 
direct act of sovereignty, be re-created. 

It should not be unnoticed in considering the value of this 
measure that 

IT IS A SIMPLE MEASURE 

free from subtlety and complication; one within the compre- 
hension of the plain citizen. This is as it should be. If 



356 William Walter Phelps 

Government will meddle with that which it should leave alone, 
at least let this interference be such as the people can under- 
stand and intelligently conform to. 

This is an easy measure, and alas I a slow measure of 
resumption. 

If we offered no quicker results we were bound to make 
provisions which should guard the long interim as far as pos- 
sible from the evils of our depreciated currency. It was not, 
therefore, sufficient for this committee to offer only a method 
of resumption which in many years would bring this country to 
specie payments. It was necessary that they should also pro- 
vide what safeguards could be devised against the recurrence 
of panics in the meantime. 

We have seen that the natural tendency of a depreciated 
currency is to lead indirectly to the destruction of that trust 
which is the foundation of all currency. We have seen that 
this destruction of trust is the occasion of panic. In the ab- 
sence of trust, in the temporary destruction of currency, only 
money is prized. In countries where the currency is normal, 
the duration of panics is stopped, by attracting to the points 
of stringency, by the offer of large interest, the money of the 
world. Here is an analogy which should guide us in the 
organization and management of the artificial currency which 
we have created. 

When, under our system, this lack of trust destroys the 
functions of currency, and a frightened people refuse to accept 
aught else than the substitute the law forces upon them, if the 
amount of money is limited, from what source can the panic 
get its relief? It cannot fall back upon the markets of the 
world. The world, unfortunately, has not its best currency. 

What is wanted, is that elasticity which the laws of trade 
supply in those countries which enjoy the currency of the 
world. In what way can an artificial elasticity be established 
which shall measurably supply this want? There seems to be 
no other than 

THAT PLAN OF FREE BANKING 

which the bill embodies. Government cannot supply it. How 
can the Government bank? On what? Could it issue, it 



His Life and Public Services 357 

would be an unnatural currency. It would pass only under 
the compulsion of law. But the circulation of the bank would 
be regulated by demand, and would represent and be backed 
by the capital of the bank or other property. This is, of 
course, only true of a bank that expects to redeem. 

Banking without such expectation would tempt the banks to 
use, in other forms, their capital and to preserve none of it in 
a shape ready for the redemption of its notes. Having put 
out their notes, without fear of redemption, the capital which 
represented these notes, and the property in exchange for 
which they issued them, would be by them placed in perma- 
nent investments, out of their reach for purposes of redemption, 
practically destroyed. Then the bank-note would cease to 
be legitimate currency. Like the Government note, it be- 
comes tlie representative of poverty, not of wealth — of that 
consumed, not that existing — and would be only an additional, 
foreign, and dangerous element in the circulation. 

But if the 

BANKS ARE FORCED TO REDEEM 

they are forced to maintain within their control the values 
which their notes represented, and their notes, therefore, re- 
main a sound and healthy currency. The health of free 
banking depends entirely upon redemption. Were the banks 
required to redeem in gold, there could be no doubt of the 
wisdom of removing any restrictions upon the volume of their 
issue; but in our case Government has interfered with the 
laws of trade and redemption may be made in legalized rather 
than real money. 

Under these conditions redemption is an experiment. 
Whether the legal tender, itself a piece of paper, can be made 
so superior to the bank-note that the holder of the bank-note 
will prefer to exchange it for the legal tender, is yet a problem 
to be solved. To insure the success of the experiment, all 
artificial means of increasing the value of the legal tender 
should be adopted. The bill of the committee finds the legal 
tender now superior to the bank-note, mainly in the fact that 
the legal tender is the bank's reserve. This insures the co- 
operation of the banks. They will force redemption as far as 



358 William Walter Phelps 

their influence reaches. Is their influence sufficient to regu- 
late the whole issue? I am of oiMnion that it is; that whether 
the citizen prefers the national note to the bank-note or not, if 
the banks do, a safe and practical redemption is secured. The 
danger of a fixed volume of such currency as passes for money, 
in view of the probability of panics, is such that the prudent 
mind may well choose the risk of practical redemption. There 
is danger of less suffering from an excessive issue of bank- 
notes which are not sent home for redemption, than there is 
from the devastations of a panic, which would be aggravated 
by a limited issue. Even without the restraints of redemption 
there is little danger of an excessive issue. The profits of the 
banking system are no longer great. The purchase of the 
bonds requires much money. The $56,000,000 issued in 1870 
has but just been distributed. Under these circumstances the 
risk cannot be great. 

We could afford to run a greate rrisk simply to check that 
cry of "monopoly," which will be urged loudly and with 
reason as long as a restriction which has let in certain citizens 
excludes others from the profits of the banking business. 

NOTICE THE LAST PROVISION 

It practically directs that we shall not use our gold to buy 
bonds; that we will pay, or save our gold to pay, obligations 
that are due, before we anticipate the payment of obligations 
not due. This is simple business thrift and honesty. Our 
gold can still be used for the expenses of Government when 
needed. With this drain upon the Treasury and the dimin- 
ished income of the Government, gentlemen who deal in gold 
need have no fear that the accumulations will be much beyond 
the necessities of the monthly payments. I fear they may fall 
short. In that case the deficiency must be met by a sale of 
bonds or increased taxation. Against such deficiency the 
Ways and Means Committee of another Congress may need to 
report. But the sale of a few bonds, or a tax upon tea and 
coffee, is better than forever to continue the disgrace of an 
irredeemable currency. 

Another objection is, the gold greenback makes another kind 
of currency. That is an objection; but both kinds perform 



His Life and Public Services 359 

the same functions, and, if in circulation, must pass at the 
same value. 

THE LAST OBJECTION 

is, — gradual as the process is, it is a process ultimately of con- 
traction, and must entail some suffering. This is true. It is 
idle to disguise it. We can regain specie payments only at a 
cost. But it is worth the cost. The people are ready to bear 
the pain; they clamor for the knife that shall save them. 
Shall we lack the courage to apply it to a willing patient? It 
needs only the determination, the start. Begin to rid us of a 
depreciated currency that stops our trade, saps our morals, 
and makes the rich richer, the poor poorer. Begin to give us 
a sound currency, the dollar of the fathers, the dollars of the 
world. We freed the slave; we saved the Union; we will pay 
our debts. 

Mr. Farwell. — I desire to ask my friend from New Jersey 
a question. He announces that he speaks in behalf of the 
poor laborer of his State and of other States, who, he says, has 
suffered and is suffering on account of this depreciated cur- 
rency. The question I desire to ask him is this: Whether the 
advanced price of labor is not four times greater than the 
present premium on gold? 

Mr. Phelps. — My answer to that would be, first, to deny 
the premises. I do not think "the price of labor is four times 
greater than the present premium on gold." If my friend is 
correct in supposing that labor has increased fourfold beyond 
the premium on gold, I make this reply: Much more certainly 
than he can show the price of labor has increased four times 
beyond the premium of gold, I can show the price of living 
has increased six times. Grant that the laborer gets 40 per 
cent, more than he once did, it costs him 60 per cent, more to 
live than then. And my answer to him now, which has been 
categorical, does not include the moral influences of a de- 
preciated currency, which ultimately stops manufactures, ulti- 
mately stops trade, and so tends to deprive the laborer of all 
wages. 

What is the result? A depreciated currency slowly raises 
the wages of the laborer; but at last the bubble bursts. 



36o William Walter Phelps 

Laborers instead of obtaining advanced wages cannot obtain 
wages at all. And if the gentleman wants to know whether 
the laborer with our depreciated currency gets an increase of 
wages four times greater than the premium on gold, let him 
go to Paterson and ask those five thousand mechanics who do 
not get any wages at all. 

AGAINST THE FRANKING PRIVILEGE 

Speeches in the House of Representatives, February 24 and 25, 1874 

Mr. Phelps said : 

Mr. Speaker, I shall oppose the bill introduced by the 
committee. I shall oppose the amendment suggested in 
his speech by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Tyner]; 
I shall oppose the substitute which will be offered at the 
proper time by my friend from Iowa [Mr. Kasson]. In a 
word, I shall oppose, with all due respect to those who differ 
from me in opinion, every bill, every amendment, every sub- 
stitute, which proposes in whole or in part, directly or in- 
directly, to re-enact the franking privilege. I believe that a 
privilege for the few is an injustice to the many, and I for one 
shall try to give privileges to none, equal rights to all. 

My opposition to this bill in the first instance, Mr. Speaker, 
is on the ground of that economy which we praise so much, 
which we practise so little. And if it is not presumptuous to 
criticise, let me say that in my opinion the record of this 
House in that regard has been singularly illogical and unsatis- 
factory; and when I remember that we are what my friend 
from Massachusetts [Mr. G. F. Hoar] so appropriately called 
us a few days ago in a moment of great excitement; when I 
remember that in his words we are a "body of intelligent 
statesmen," I submit, Mr. Speaker, our record is puzzling and 
unsatisfactory. 

What is that record? We came here fresh from the people, 
eager to win reputation for ourselves, and to save the Com- 
monwealth. What did we do? ^^'e began to sj^eak; you 
spoke, Mr. Speaker; I spoke; and every man who got the 
floor spoke — for what? To demonstrate to the people our 



His Life and Public Services 361 

willingness to sacrifice even our own salaries. We wasted ten 
days in talk, and when an end came, when we were all tired, 
when we were all hungry, when we were all sleepy, my inde- 
fatigable friend from Maine [Mr. Hale] insisted we should 
stay here late into the evening that he might read us a lecture 
on the selfish extravagance which would cut down our salaries 
to only $6000 instead of $5500, — a sum which he had recom- 
mended and more than once urged us to adopt. And the 
father of the House [Mr. Dawes], rising to the height of the 
great subject, in a voice whose sepulchral warning yet lingers 
in my ear, assured us again and again that he could bide his 
time — he could bide his time, 

I went home that night distressed that I could not look 
upon this matter of $500 as one of such stupendous import- 
ance. But, sir, at the same time it entered my heart to think 
that under leaders so zealous the Republic could never take 
any detriment. But, mark you, the very next morning, or the 
next morning but one, my friend upon my right, the gentleman 
from Iowa [Mr. Donnan], the chairman of the Committee on 
Printing, modestly stepped to the front, and in this same 
House and before the same earnest economists proposed a 
bill — for what? To print for gratuitous distribution two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand copies of the Agricultural Report; 
not two hundred and fifty; not twenty-five hundred; not 
twenty-five thousand; but two hundred and fifty thousand 
copies, of the Agricultural Report. How I admired the 
audacity of my friend from Iowa! How I pitied his fate! If 
there had been such protests and speeches for a poor $500, 
what would be the fate of a man who dared to come before 
this House and propose that we should throw $500,000 into 
the tag-bags and barber-shops of the nation? 

Mr. Speaker, my indefatigable friend from Maine never 
once took the floor upon that question; the father of the 
House refused utterly to prophesy, and the bill of my friend 
from Iowa went through almost without objection, certainly 
without discussion. And then day after day followed, and 
bill after bill was introduced, and the session began to grow 
old. Was there a man of us who got the floor who did not 
cry out for economy? Was there a man of us able to find 



362 William Walter Phelps 

that particular measure on which he was willing to practise 
it? 

By and by there came an occasion, and the brave and elo- 
quent gentleman before me [Mr. Woodford] seized it. He 
offered the House an opportunity to reform and improve its 
record. He rose up very boldly — very unfortunately as the 
issue showed — and clearly placed the issue before the House. 
Does the House wish to discuss the finances of the nation, or 
does it wish to discuss its garden-seeds? And after full con- 
sideration the House, by one of the most unanimous votes I 
have witnessed this session, declared that as for them they 
would provide first for the distribution of garden-seeds, and 
after that for the distribution of the currency. When I sought 
the explanation of this seemingly inexplicable decision, what 
was it? The reply which I never hear upon this floor, but 
which I hear in my seat or whispered in the lobby, "It was 
the grangers"; that the grangers had called the attention of 
their Representatives to the fact that spring had come and the 
earth was waiting for its seeds, and there could be no further 
delay. 

And so we get a bill before us which I say, in perfect sin- 
cerity, revives the franking privilege. I say it explicitly and 
boldly, this bill of the committee gives the member every right 
he had before except one. We cannot write our autograph 
letters and frank them. Wonderful restriction! We may 
frank documents that weigh one hundred pounds; we cannot 
frank a half-ounce letter. The gentlemen of the committee 
take from us the only privilege that is desirable and not sub- 
ject to abuse. Who will write letters enough to burden the 
mails? Does the committee know how hard it is for members 
to write? Does it know how hard it is for constituents to 
read? The abuse lies elsewhere. 

What was the abuse of the franking privilege which was 
complained of? Was it not the free transmission of heavy 
material, masses of binding and printing which we crammed 
into the mails of the country, to the damage and delay of the 
business and social correspondence of the people? And it is 
this heavy material that the bill proposes to frank — public 
documents, books, periodicals, seeds, roots, plants, scions, 



His Life and Public Services 363 

everything else that is worthless and heavy. The committee 
in preparing this bill have revived the old abuse. They have 
taken the poor old castaway of the Forty-second Congress; 
they have given him a silk hat, and have dyed his mustache. 
But he is the same old original Jacobs still. 

Why not be fair; why not be frank; and come out and say: 
"Behold the old bill; we have rebaptized it; but only — 

Keep the word of promise to our ear. 
And break it to our hope " ? 

I think it was my friend from Missouri [Mr. Buckner] who 
said that the abuse of the franking privilege was that members 
of this House and members of the Senate used it dishonestly. 
Mr. Speaker, judging others by myself, no one can think more 
poorly of this House than I, and yet I am perfectly convinced 
that neither in this House nor in the other are there to be found 
men who would dishonestly use a privilege like this. The 
statement is false on the face of it. Am I to believe with my 
friend from Missouri [Mr. Buckner] that any of these mem- 
bers now gathering round me — members who represent intel- 
ligent constituencies — any in this "collection of intelligent 
statesmen" would use his frank to send his dirty linen home 
to the wash? Sir, the idea is preposterous. A member who 
would use his frank to send his soiled linen to his washer- 
woman would never have any. And if there is any one who 
supposes that any Senator at the other end of the Capitol is 
about to frank home his furniture, when the people have no 
longer need of his services here, he must suppose that Senator 
a blockhead. No; the only abuse of the franking privilege is 
that which we propose to revive; that is, to load the mail with 
a mass of heavy material which does not pay its way. 

What is urged in favor o€ this proposition? We are told that 
it is our bounden duty — my friend from Wisconsin [Mr. 
Hazleton] puts it the shortest — to provide the people with 
information. Now I will admit that my friend needs informa- 
tion; I think the people need information. But the people 
need other things — many more than we can supply. The 
people need warmth, cleanliness, virtue. But no one here 



364 William Walter Phelps 

comes forward and proposes a free distribution of fires, of 
baths, or of Bibles. 

The people need something else. And just here for once 
the sentiments of him who dwelleth in cities and him who 
dwelleth on the prairies, of him who lives in the East, and of 
him who lives in the West, of him who lives in the North, and 
of him who lives in the South, agree. Here is the one great 
want of the country. Why, Mr. Speaker [Mr. Monroe in the 
chair], did you ever meet one of your friends who was from 
the noble West who did not tell you that the noble West 
needed money? Did you ever meet any one from the sunny 
South who did not tell you that the sunny South needed 
money? And I am willing frankly to confess, in the presence 
of this "collection of intelligent statesmen," that my own State 
of New Jersey needs money. More; I have the best of 
evidence, to come nearer home, that in my own district there 
is scarcely a man, woman, or child who does not need money. 
And yet I do not propose, nor do you propose, neither does 
this committee propose, to distribute to your people or to my 
people the free bath, or the free fire, or the free Bible, or the 
free greenback. 

Now, my friend from Illinois [Mr. Cannon] who addressed 
you three or four days ago, with an eloquence that was un- 
tutored but very effective, whose imagination flashed along the 
iron network of his logic in a way that fairly astonished the 
House, spoke of a great many things that filled me witli won- 
der and amazement. He spoke of the hayseed in his hair, 
and under the magic touch of his voice that hayseed glowed 
around his head like the halo of the martyrs; and when he 
spoke of the oats in his throat, it was with such a force and 
such eloquence that I knew he felt them; and to all of this I 
had not the slightest objection. I listened and wondered; I 
gazed and admired until he came to praise his country folk at 
the expense of mine. This I would not stand. He represents 
a country constituency, just as I do. He has no large cities 
in his district, just as I have none. And he had no business 
to boast of the intelligence of his farmers on the prairies, just 
as if there were no intelligent farmers in New Jersey. How 
he boasted of their literary taste ! And when he began to tell 



His Life and Public Services 365 

us all that his farmers sent him letters to ask for books, I 
wanted then and there to rise up and say: "I represent farm- 
ers; they write to me for books; day after day I get similar 
letters from my constituents. They are wonderful letters, 
and sometimes the energy of their petition is such that it defies 
Noah Webster and Lindley Murray. They never fail to make 
the proviso that I should pay the postage." 

Sir, I do not believe that among the letters from his prairie 
constituents, of which he speaks so bravely, he can find one 
that asks him for the history of the silurian period, or the 
crustacean formation, or the isothermal theory. It takes the 
Jersey farmer to ask for such! I appeal to the House, shall 
he boast over the intelligent requests of his farmers because 
they live on the prairies, and I be tongue-tied here and not 
suffered to speak of the intelligence of my farmers who live on 
the banks of the Passaic, the Hackensack, and the Hudson? 

But, Mr. Speaker, I have concealed part of the truth. For 
every letter which I receive asking for the silurian period, or 
the crustacean formation, or the isothermal theory, I receive 
two letters which prefer a different request. For every letter 
asking for a public document, a Patent-Office Report, or even 
an Agricultural Report, I get a letter politely and kindly ask- 
ing the loan of five dollars. Now, I ask if we are to furnish 
all our constituents with all they want — with their heat, with 
their information, with their cleanliness, with their virtue — 
must we not also furnish them with money? Yet I do not 
hear one single member, even if he represents a grange, who 
stands upon this floor to ask that, in addition to the Agricul- 
tural Report and the isothermal theory, we shall also by free 
distribution send five dollars to each of our constituents. 
And yet would not the five dollars help more than the Agricul- 
tural Report in our elections next fall? 

But my friend from Illinois is confident that the people at 
large want these documents. Now, Mr. Speaker, far be it 
from me to run against the people. I have great respect for 
them in view of the fact that an election occurs so soon. But 
let us be sure first as to what the people want. My friend 
from Illinois himself aided to show that the people do not want 
the franking privilege and do not want the public documents 



366 William Walter Phelps 

at the cost of taxation. He very properly ruled out from the 
discussion all the disreputable members of the community. 
He said, and said truly, that the railways do not want the 
crustacean formation or the isothermal theory or the Agricul- 
tural Report. I do not think they do; and I do not want to 
give it to them. I think the railways have no rights that we 
on this floor are bound to recognize except the right to be 
taxed and to carry the people for less than cost. If they 
wanted the public documents, we would not listen to their cry. 
Fortunate railways, that they do not! Neither, he says, do 
the express companies — another disreputable portion of so- 
ciety, useless and contemptible. They do not want public 
documents, and it is well they do not; for they could not have 
them. They have no rights which we are bound to respect 
except the right to suffer taxation and receive abuse. 

And so he went through the list to banks and manufactories. 
But when he had covered the whole class of disreputable peo- 
ple who do not want the public documents, why did he stop? 
Ah, Mr. Speaker, there was an important omission in this 
catalogue which was supplied by my friend from Iowa [Mr. 
Kasson]. As I read the signs of the times, a majority of the 
people who dwell under the protection of these United States 
vote the Republican ticket. They voted it two years ago; 
they voted it last fall. Why did my friend from Illinois forget, 
until the gentleman from Iowa told him, that the Republican 
party do not want the franking privilege; that the last time 
they had an opportunity to speak they said in words as explicit 
as words could make the declaration, that they would abolish 
the franking privilege? My friend from Illinois had over- 
looked or forgotten the Republican party. Where then, in the 
name of common-sense, are the people who do want the frank- 
ing privilege? When I pause for a reply I get it: "The 
grangers want it"; and inasmuch as the grangers, so far as I 
can judge, want everything, let us admit that they want these 
public documents. 

Mr. Speaker, I find that in discussing this franking privilege 
I have got into the printing-house; and that, as my friend 
from Wisconsin [Mr. Hazleton] said, is the real issue. This 
is our best argument. If you revive the franking privilege you 



His Life and Public Services 2>^7 

revive all the abuses of the public printing; and a blow aimed 
at the franking privilege is a blow aimed at the printing-house. 
May blows fall so many, so heavy, that this country may be 
saved the wasteful expenditure which proceeds from that 
source! Who would regret the fall of the Printing Bureau? 
Who really wants these public documents? Does it never 
occur to our friends that the inexorable laws of trade— those 
which even a paternal government cannot always successfully 
interfere with — show that the people do not want them? There 
is no town or village in this country where a traveller cannot 
go to any second-hand book-shop and buy any public docu- 
ment — whether it be the Agricultural Report, the Patent-Office 
Report, the crustacean formation, or the silurian period — by 
paying a little more than it is worth as old paper. 

Evidently the demand is small, and we can easily answer it 
by providing a system by which reports, which contribute to 
the education of our people in political matters, may be brought 
more economically within their control; sending a few copies 
to the public libraries, or enabling all who wish to own them to 
purchase them at their real cost. If we are bound, notwith- 
standing what I think is forcibly urged, to furnish information, 
do not, for pity's sake, distribute Patent-Office Reports, nor 
give the people the Agricultural Reports. Certainly let us not 
send down to our districts any more treatises on the isothermal 
lines, or crustacean formations, or silurian periods, or salary 
grabs, or any one of these things. If we must tax the many 
to give books to the few, let us give them the spelling-book, the 
arithmetic, the reading-book — something that will really benefit 
them, which they will appreciate, which will make them better 
citizens, and more sure to vote the Republican ticket. 

I said I opposed this measure in the interest of economy. 
I oppose it now in the interest of that universal justice which 
we all praise as we do economy, but which we refuse to prac- 
tise just as we do economy. But my borrowed time allows 
only a question on this point. Is it fair to the people of these 
United States to tax them all, A, B, C, and D, all down to Z, 
in order that we may give a book to A? I claim this is not 
Republican doctrine. It is wrong; and we have no business to 
compel fifty people to pay taxes to give a luxury to one. . . . 



368 William Walter Phelps 

The Speaker//-^ tempore (Mr. Monroe). — The time of the 
gentleman has expired. 

Several Members. — Go on; go on. 

The Speaker pro tempore. — If there be no objection the 
gentleman may proceed. The Chair hears none. 

Mr. Phelps.— There is an amendment to this bill. "It was 
not always so." When this bill was first presented by the 
committee it was not there. The amendment is in italics, as 
much as to say, "Beware! " And I ask gentlemen to lend me 
their attention for a few moments while I state why the com- 
mittee introduced the amendment, and urge all my Republican 
friends if they must pass this bill to see that they pass it with 
the amendment in. Briefly, when this bill was reported with- 
out the amendment, it came to the ear of a gentleman upon the 
committee that another Democratic friend of mine from New 
York was preparing a circular which he intended to send next 
fall, under the exercise of the franking privilege, to all Re- 
publican districts. He was enabled to obtain a copy of this 
circular; it was found to be short — in that respect, of course, 
unlike my friend — but, on the whole, witty, as my friend is 
always witty; but it was terribly damaging to the Republican 
party. 

Under these circumstances, I ask my Republican friends in 
this House — I have nothing to say to my friends on the other 
side — Ought we not, if we pass this bill, to see that there is in 
it this amendment? For the provision is carefully drawn that 
the Republican postmaster, if at any time, which would be 
about September, he thought the public welfare required il 
(and no doubt he would so think if a number of such circulars 
were deposited in the post-ofifice), might, in that case, retain 
these circulars " in whole or in part for thirty days," or until 
the country was carried safely over the Pennsylvania election. 
I assure you he would retain them " in whole." The amend- 
ment is important. If we pass this bill, let us pass the amend- 
ment with it. It is our only safety. 

And when we pass the amended bill, let us do it in a credit- 
able manner. A bad deed derives some merit from a bold 
performance. Let us be bold in this. Let us own up that it 
is the original Jacobs. Let us take off the silk hat; let us 



His Life and Public Services 369 

wash away the dye, and surrender all pretences. Let us so 
act that the i)eople will not despise us, though they censure. 
If we attempt to deceive, we shall only win contempt. They 
are as intelligent as we are. We cannot deceive them. We 
shall fail in the attempt. 

It is therefore better policy, as it is better manhood, if we 
purpose to re-enact the franking privilege, not to do it by this 
bill, but to do it boldly and openly. Take and adopt the amend- 
ment of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Mellish], and 
by it tell the people that we do re-enact the franking privilege. 
Do not let us ever again make the mistake of attempting to 
deceive them by a false issue. 

[The next day Mr. Cobb, of Kansas, made a personal attack 
upon Mr. Phelps, charging that he had spoken disrespectfully 
of the House, and reproaching him for being rich, and also 
criticising him as a director in trust companies and other cor- 
porations, and a stockholder in railroads. To this demagogic 
tirade the member from New Jersey immediately replied as 
follows :] 

I do not want to make any speech. I only want to say 
something. I confess to trouble in deciding in what man- 
ner I shall answer the indictment which has been so sud- 
denly and unexpectedly entered. I had not the good fortune 
to be in the House at the opening of the gentleman's re- 
marks; fortunately I heard the middle and the end. I hope 
I shall not dwell on the personalities in them further than to 
make one or two necessary corrections. He tried to thrust 
upon me some issues for which I am not responsible, and which 
lie betw^een this House and myself. These I must correct. 

It is not true that I spoke disrespectfully of this House. It 
is not true that I entertained any but the highest regards for 
its members. And it is wrong in my friend from Kansas to 
drag in a foreign issue. 

Did I violate any proper rule of criticism in saying that in 
my opinion — an opinion which I share with many others — this 
House had not displayed during this session that practical in- 
terest in economy which the country expected, and which the 



370 William Walter Phelps 

necessity of the Treasury required? It was proper criticism, 
and it is the truth. 

But the gentleman has made personal charges to which I 
must plead guilty. He has found the facts and read them 
from the Congressional Directory, With the propriety of the 
method in which he conducted that portion of his argument I 
find no fault. If it suits him it suits me. As to the facts 
which he has exhibited to this House, they are correct. I 
have been unfortunate enough by hard work, industry, and a 
moderate amount of honesty, to have secured the positions he 
mentions. They involve a deal of labor, a deal of care, a deal 
of responsibility, and if any man envies me therefor I pity 
him. I will cheerfully yield the positions if he will assume the 
care. Yes, I am guilty. 

But why did not the gentleman, when he was presenting this 
record to the House, say something like this: "It is a disgrace 
to this member of the House that he has secured these posi- 
tions. It is a disgrace to this member that widows and orphans 
have been willing to trust him with their funds. It is a dis- 
grace that in my State and other States he buried his money 
in railways which have made the country rich and which have 
left him poor. But it is proper for me to say that while he 
has done all these disgraceful acts, still, when the people of 
his district chose to send him here to represent them, he an- 
nounced publicly his misfortune. It is a redeeming feature in 
his case that he said, in effect: ' Though I have done wrong, 
though I have accumulated wealth, though I have aided where 
I could the developing of distant parts of the country, yet still, 
knowing the disgrace of such conduct, and unwilling that any 
man here should suppose that my acts are influenced by inter- 
ests which the House assumes but does not know, I will send 
to the Congressional Record an extract from the New Jersey 
Manual, which will give to all this damning record of my 
past.' " My friend from Kansas might at least have done me 
this justice. 

Sir, if it be disgraceful to be a director of trust companies 
and of banks; if it be a disgrace to be a director of railroad 
and express companies; if it be wicked and contrary to the 
spirit of American institutions that I should endeavor by thrift 



His Life and Public Services 371 

and honesty to accumulate that property for which others toil, 
yet I take this credit that I made a clean breast of it. Did I 
not, in anticipation of the polite curiosity that might introduce 
a resolution of inquiry, boldly and voluntarily go upon the 
record? . 

Take the book; read the honorable gentleman's record. 
I admit, without one feeling of disappointment, that in that 
record I find nothing which is not creditable. I find nothing 
to censure, except that he endeavored to obtain at the uni- 
versities that education which has enabled him to speak so 
forcibly here. Aside from that, nothing of which he need be 
ashamed. I find that instead of wasting his time in increas- 
ing the material interests of this country, instead of build- 
ing railroads or establishing banks or doing anything of that 
disreputable, but humble and useful kind, wiser than I, he 
preferred, as a non-producer, continually to feed at different 
corners of the public crib. 

The Speaker pro tempore. — The time of the gentleman from 
New Jersey [Mr. Phelps] has expired. 

Several Members. — Let him go on. 

The Speaker pro tempore. — If there be no objection, the 
gentleman will proceed. The Chair hears none. 

Mr. Phelps. — The gentleman's record, therefore, was dif- 
ferent from mine. I earned my own support; he took his 
from the people. I labored in every way to accumulate that 
material wealth which is the secret of a new country's develop- 
ment and growth ; he chose, as a politic way, to use in a proper 
way the wealth which others had acquired. Now, mark you, 
Mr. Speaker, I could run on some time in this strain; but that 
would be just as unfair to him as he was to me; for really it is 
no disgrace to me that, having a taste for material interests, I 
chose to labor for the development of the country; neither is 
it any disgrace to him that, having a taste and capacity for 
public life, he went into it, and from his majority held office. 
And, sir, had I been as successful as he has been, up to the 
present time, in receiving the honors of my party, I fear that 
like him I would never hesitate on any occasion, at any risk 
of good sense, of good breeding, of politeness — nothing should 
forbid me — to seize every opportunity, whether fair or unfair, 



3/2 William Walter Phelps 

to speak as I thought would please my people, though to do it 
I had to twist the eternal rules of truth, and make the wrong 
appear the better reason. 

Mr, Speaker, I regret I have occupied at all the time of this 
House. I did not wish to speak; but it seemed to me that, 
after an assault which was so directly personal, I should seize 
the opportunity of stating what I have endeavored to say in an 
inconsequential way. 

It is true that I have wealth — I beg pardon, Mr. Speaker; 
that expression only shows that there is no proposition which 
a man can state absolutely. Before the panic it might have 
been well said that 1 could support myself and my family with- 
out the daily toil of the laborer, or the salary of the office- 
holder. But that panic, which was the result of paper money 
— I am glad to get in one good point in this wretched mess of 
personalities, — that panic, the result of an issue of irredeem- 
able currency, did so injure me that I would be to-day willing 
to compare my possessions with those of my friend from Kan- 
sas; and upon such a comparison, he counting the money 
which he had got from the people, and I deducting the money 
which I had lost in Kansas railways, I am pretty sure he would 
find that, standing here to-day, he is a richer man than I. 
And the only bitterness I feel on this occasion is, that in these 
very railways in which I have made investments, and which 
pass mostly through the Western States, I have lost a great 
part of the fortune for the possession of which I am taunted. 

My friend from Illinois, in his remarks, rather implied that 
I was a railway man, and therefore hostile to the prairies. Is 
it improper to say that through his own prairies, through his 
towns of Urbana and Champaign, there was a railroad built in 
which I was interested? It raised the value of those prairies 
at least one hundred percent., and caused the growth of little 
cities all along its line. So his district gained by my railway; 
and as yet I have not got, and see no chance of getting back, 
my money. Yet these representatives of the "grangers," who 
have got our Eastern money and kept it, who have received 
from us these railways and given us nothing in return except a 
series of hopeless investments, stand uj) here in holy horror 
and declare that we shall not be allowed to speak on this mat- 



His Life and Public Services 37^ 

ter, because we lost our money in the West. Under these 
circumstances, is it fair for my friend from Kansas to take 
Eastern money, use it in his railways, grow rich upon the jjro- 
ceeds of it, and then taunt us because we were foolish enough 
to go to Kansas and invest it? 

If I am forced to speak of these railways, I think I may 
safely say that if my friend will look all through the disgraceful 
record of railways with which I am connected, there will not 
be found (unless I am deceived) one that ever received or ever 
asked aid from this Government, either in the way of money 
subsidy or land gratuity. I am a representative of New Jersey. 
I have acquired wealth, and spent it in Kansas, in Illinois, and 
in Texas, getting from it, in many cases, no return; getting 
from it in no case returns until long years have passed. Shall 
I for these reasons be prevented from speaking in this House 
what I may think with reference to the merits of the great 
questions which are brought before us? If my own modesty 
or the fear of the grangers should counsel silence, there is that 
in my representative position here which forbids me; and so 
long as the farmers of New Jersey send a man so stained with 
the achievements of honest industry to represent them on this 
floor, I shall, whether I am to be followed the next morning 
by my friend from Kansas or not, speak in the interests of the 
people as I understand those interests; speak for the welfare 
of the whole country as I understand its welfare; and no taunt 
of this kind from any source shall ever prevent me from meet- 
ing promptly every charge which may be hurled against me 
here or elsewhere. 

IN BEHALF OF FITZ-JOHN PORTER 

Speech in the House of Representatives, February i, 1884 

Bill for the relief of, and to restore to his former position in the army, Fitz- 

John Porter 

Mr. Phelps said : 

Afr. Chairman^ speaking for the one most interested, I 
express his deep regret for the unkind allusions to the living 
and the dead which have been made in the heat of this discus- 
sion. In his long search for justice he has carefully avoided 



374 William Walter Phelps 

any reflection upon those who have impeded him in the pursuit, 
and he refuses to accept any responsibility for these allusions, 
whether made by those who are friendly or those who are un- 
friendly to the bill. And may I not assume that if those who 
had made them had the floor they, too, would express their 
regret: the gentleman from New York [Mr. Slocum] who has 
charge of the bill, that he reflected upon the great war minis- 
ter, whose great faults history will pardon for his greater 
achievements; the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Steele], that, 
in his surprise at finding that a general on the board of 
examination viewed the evidence different from him, he inti- 
mated that he looked at the evidence with an eye upon the 
Presidency; the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Cutcheon], 
that he checked the course of his strong argument to intimate 
that there was another general who wished to be reinstated; 
my colleague from New Jersey [Mr. McAdoo], a young Rupert 
in debate, that he suggested that a conviction of the military 
incompetency of still another general was a universal condition 
of sanity; my peaceful friend from Michigan [Mr. HorrJ. that 
he confessed that he could think just as General Grant did in 
everything, except in military matters; and my neighbor here 
from Ohio [Mr. Taylor] — but I cannot give the time to recall 
all the illustrious names that have been unnecessarily dragged 
into this debate. 

Could they all be eliminated it were better; and this case 
could stand or fall on its own merits. It is my duty to speak 
to-day for Fitz-John Porter because he is my constituent. It 
is at the same time a pleasure and an honor because he is my 
friend, and I believe him to bo an honest man and a loyal 
soldier, 

"The mills of the gods grind slowly" in his case. 

It was twenty years last week (Monday) since the last sig- 
nature was put to the verdict of a military jury which drove 
him out of the army and made him a leper whom his Govern- 
ment should never touch with an office of trust or profit. This 
verdict awarded him such infamy that for a while Iscariot and 
Arnold were his only competitors. A blundering department 
furnished to an anxious President, a baffled army, and an in- 
dignant people this sacrifice; and fifteen millions straining unto 



His Life and Public Services 375 

death to save their country in an hour of supreme despondency 
and gloom found a momentary relief in cursing the name of 
Porter. 

Who was this sacrifice? One whose ancestry deserved well 
of the Republic; one, who as a boy of gentle heart and ways 
learned in the National Academy to hold a stain upon his 
honor as a wound, and to conceive all honor as sphered in 
loyalty to his country; one who as a youth stood the most 
chivalrous and accomplished officer in a guild whose military 
code gives to the testimony of a member under oath no greater 
force than his formal declaration; one who in manhood won 
wounds and glory in the field, and who on the 27th day of 
August, 1862, as said the gentleman from Michigan, "stood 
the consummate flower of the American army and its pride." 
This was the gentle, chivalrous, illustrious soldier who was 
thus lifted up into a storm of obloquy and reproach as a traitor 
to his country. What can he do? His fate is worse than 
Arnold's or Judas's. Arnold, hating his country, fled from it 
and received the rewards of treason; but Porter loves his 
country, and has no thought except of loyal service. Judas 
went out and died, conscience stricken; but Porter's con- 
science is clear, and remorse refuses to lead him to the field of 
blood. He does what an honest man ought, and only an 
honest man can do; he takes up his burden and bears it. He 
will live, and live down his wrongs. He will wait, and trust 
to God and his country for redress. He withdrew to the quiet 
of a New Jersey village and established his home. There he 
faithfully discharged all his duties, neither seeking nor shun- 
ning observation. He was a good husband, a good father, a 
good neighbor, citizen, and friend. That little village for 
twenty years has watched, honored, and loved the man. They 
have seen his eye grow sad and his hair grow white with hope 
deferred. But he never talked of his grievance nor asked for 
pity. He was fulfilling a sentence which, for such a man, 
Edward Everett truly said, was "in some respects worse than 
a sentence of death." This was his home life. His life 
abroad was a constant struggle to regain his good name. 
That was his mission, and he prosecuted it without pause or 
rest. On every proper occasion, in every proper place he 



376 William Walter Phelps 

declared his innocence, offered his evidence, and asked for 
examination. 

What was his crime? He did not obey an order of his 
superior to fight. And what was his defence ? That the 
order came at night, and when it was too late to execute it. 
And second — for he was no coward, and only one man on this 
floor has been desperate enough to impute cowardice to him — 
and second, had the order come in time he would not have 
obeyed it, for its execution was the fruitless and assured 
destruction of his corps. I speak of one order. You say you 
have heard much of several orders. True, much in this 
House, but nothing in the report of the minority. The charges 
connected with the other orders brought into this discussion 
were so trivial and unimportant, and the answers to them were 
so complete and satisfactory, that the members of the com- 
mittee to whom the opposition to this bill was intrusted, the 
prosecutors of this case, ignored them. Not so, however, the 
free-lances on the floor, who found in this ocean of facts about 
the sky above and the earth beneath and the atmosphere be- 
tween so fruitful a head of eloquence that the galleries thought 
they heard the famous chorus of the opera, "Let us talk 
about the weather." Neither of these two orders was to fight. 
They were simply to march. Though not important enough 
to be mentioned in the minority report, as they have been the 
source of so much eloquence in the House, let me refer to 
them to escape confusion. 



"[Order No. i.] 



" Headquarters Army of Virginia, 
Bristoe Station, August 27, 1862—6.30 p.m. 



"General: The major-general commanding directs that 
you start at i o'clock, and come forward with your whole 
corps, or such part as is with you, so as to be here by daylight 
to-morrow morning. Hooker has had a severe action with the 
enemy, with a loss of about three hundred killed and wounded. 
The enemy has been driven back, but is retiring along the 
railroad. We must drive him from Manassas, and clear the 
country between that place and Gainesville, where McDowell 



His Life and Public Services 377 

is. If Morell has not joined you, send word to him to push 
forward immediately; also send word to Banks to hurry for- 
ward with all speed to take your place at Warrenton Junction. 
It is necessary on all accounts that you should be here by day- 
light. I send an officer with this dispatch who will conduct 
you to this place. Be sure and send word to Banks, who is 
on the road to Fayetteville, probably in the direction of 
Bealeton. Say to Banks, also, that he had best run back the 
railroad trains to Cedar Run. If he is not with you, write him 
to that effect. 

"P. S. — If Banks is not at Warrenton Junction, leave a regi- 
ment of infantry and two pieces of artillery as a guard till he 
comes up, with instructions to follow you immediately. If 
Banks is not at the junction, instruct Colonel Clary to run the 
trains back to this side of Cedar Run and post a regiment and 
section of artillery with it " 

The first order was that General Porter should start at i 
o'clock on the morning of August 28, 1862, and march his 
force nine or ten miles to Bristoe Station, that it might there 
join at daybreak with the main army for the purpose of clear- 
ing the country between that place and Gainesville. General 
Porter, upon receiving it, summoned his generals and they 
looked at the state of affairs. The night was dark and misty; 
the road, surface and ditch, was blocked with wagons and 
cannons and their wrecks. It was doubtful if any effort made 
before the first glimmer of light would accomplish anything. 
It was certain that no effort could get the troops to Bristoe 
Station at daybreak, as was desired. These troops were 
fatigued and would need rest. They should be fresh for the 
all-day task of wandering in pursuit, which the order fore- 
shadowed. The order showed, too, that the task to which 
they were summoned was not one of immediate importance. 
It was not a summons to a defence, or to an attack where great 
haste and exact punctuality was demanded. The order said 
that the enemy had already been driven back and was retiring. 
The task was to "clear the country" behind them. That task 
could begin as well any hour after daylight. These facts upon 
which that little council of war passed were not conjecture. 



37^ William Walter Phelps 

Before the order was received Porter had sent out two aids to 
view the road and report. This he did in anticipation of 
orders, and when he and his associates decided that it was not 
wise to make the start at i o'clock, he promptly sent a mes- 
senger to Pope and informed him of the decision and its 
reasons. He started at 3 o'clock with the first glimmer of 
light that made the start practicable, and there is no evidence 
that loss resulted to anybody from the delay. Pope admitted 
in his testimony (volume i., page 19) that it did no harm. 
The whole charge is so trivial that it was evidently brought as 
a make-weight, as something to buttress the main charge. 



"[Order No. 2.] 



" Headquarters Army of Virginia, 

" Centreville, August 29, 1862. 



"Generals McDowell and Porter: 

" You will please move forward with your joint commands 
toward Gainesville. I sent General Porter written orders to 
that effect an hour and a half ago. Heintzelman, Sigel, and 
Reno are moving on the Warrenton turnpike, and must now 
be not far from Gainesville. I desire that as soon as com- 
munication is established between this force and your own the 
whole command shall halt. It may be necessary to fall back 
behind Bull Run at Centreville to-night. I presume it will be 
so on account of our supplies. I have sent no orders of any 
description to Ricketts, and none to interfere in any way with 
the movements of McDowell's troops, except what I sent by 
his aid-de-camp last night, which were to hold his position on 
the Warrenton pike until the troops from here should fall upon 
the enemy's flank and rear. I do not even know Ricketts's 
position, as I have not been able to find out where (General 
McDowell was until a late hour this morning. General Mc- 
Dowell will take immediate steps to communicate with General 
Ricketts, and instruct him to rejoin the other divisions of his 
corps as soon as practicable. 

" If any considerable advantages are to be gained by depart- 
ing from this order, it will not be strictly carried out. One 
thing must be had in view, that the troops must occupy a posi- 



His Life and Public Services 379 

tion from which they can reach Bull Run to-night or by morn- 
ing. The indications are that the whole force of the enemy is 
moving in this direction at a pace that will bring them here 
by to-morrow night or next day. My own headquarters will 
be, for the present, with Heintzelman's corps or at this place. 

"John Pope. 
"Major-General Commanding." 

The second order was addressed to McDowell and Porter. 
It is the joint order. It directed that their forces should 
move toward Gainesville. And what is the defence? First, 
Porter might have disobeyed without censure, for it was a 
discretionary order. The order says: "If any considerable 
advantages are to be gained by departing from this order, it will 
not be strictly carried out." The second defence is that it 
was carried out, for the order found Porter with McDowell, 
just where it ordered him to be. Says McDowell (volume i., 
page 349) : "I commanded Porter's corps and my own division. 
We there on the ground received the joint order which directed 
the very thing we had done." And Pope knew that this joint 
order had been obeyed, for in his dispatch numbered 26 A 
(volume i., page 329) he says so. Why, then, did gentlemen 
discuss this joint order which was executed, as say both Mc- 
Dowell and Pope ? There would seem to be no reason except 
for the temptation to warm our blood with the battle-cries of 
McDowell, "Fight? That is what we are here for," and "You 
go in there." These are good cries either for the House or 
for the field, but they were better had they been uttered by 
McDowell on the field as they were repeated by the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Keifer] in the House, in a voice that could 
be distinctly heard; for General Porter never heard them; 
Lieutenant-Colonel Locke, chief of staff, never heard them; 
Captain Martm, of a Massachusetts battery; Captain Earle, 
Lieutenant Davis, and General Patrick never heard them; 
but, being all six by and present, did hear General McDowell 
say: "This is no place to fight a battle; you are too far off." 
And when General McDowell was recalled to explain the 
dilemma, that the three gallant officers did not hear, " That 
is what we are here for," and "Go in there," but, on the 



38o William Walter Phelps 

contrary, " This is no place to fight a battle," what was Mc- 
Dowell's explanation? I repeat his very words: 

"I can not recollect precisely what occurred or what con- 
versation or what words passed between us at that time. I 
can not say what language I used or how it may have been 
understood whilst talking on that." (Pages 217 and 218.) 

Why did not the gentleman from Ohio declaim what General 
McDowell was heard to say, and not what he wished he had 
said? 'Die cry "This is no place to fight a battle" would not 
be so good for the House, but would have been a better order 
in the field; for it has never seemed to me a very creditable 
picture, even when painted by the gentleman from Ohio, to 
see McDowell take eighteen thousand men (ten thousand of 
Ricketts's, eight thousand of King's) from Porter, leave him 
with only nine thousand, and march away with his great force 
from the field, while he pointed to Porter in the opposite 
direction and said, "You go in there." It always seemed to 
me and to the world that McDowell, if either, should have 
gone in there himself. 

" Headquarters in the Field, 

"August 29, 1S62 — 4.30 P.M. 
"Major-General Porter: 

"Your line of march brings you in on the enemy's right flank. 
I desire you to push forward into action at once on the enemy's 
flank, and, if possible, on his rear, keeping your right in com- 
munication with General Reynolds. 

"The enemy is massed in the woods in front of us, but can 
be shelled out as soon as you engage their flank. Keep heavy 
reserves and use your batteries, keeping well closed to your 
right all the time. In case you are obliged to fall back, do 
so to your right and rear, so as to keep you in close communi- 
cation with the right wing. 

"John Pope, 
"Major-General Commanding." 

And now for the order of 4.30, an order which the minority 
report did discuss. Upon it stands or falls the guilt of Porter. 



His Life and Public Services 381 

This order required Porter to fight. It instructed him to at- 
tack the enemy on his flank and, if possible, on his rear. He 
did not attack the enemy on his flank or on his rear. And 
what is his defence? First, he received the order after six 
o'clock at night, when it was too late. But, again, Porter, 
notwithstanding the cowardice with which the gentleman from 
Ohio [Mr. Keifer] taunted him, chooses to accept a braver 
defence, and admits that had the order come in time he would 
not have made the attack. 

First, as to the time that this order was received. Before 
the court-martial there was no documentary evidence to fix it. 
There was much oral testimony, and some of it conflicted. 
The vast preponderance, however, seemed to establish the 
fact that Porter received it at sunset. Major-General Sykes 
says he was present when the order was delivered, and says, 
"It was as near sunset as I can remember." Colonel Locke, 
too, saw the delivery, and says it was between sundown and 
dusk. Captain Monteith, too, was present; he says it was 
sundown. The testimony of these three cfiicers joined with 
that of General Porter would seem to be sufficient. But be- 
fore the advisory board, sixteen years afterward, some new 
dispatches of Porter were produced. General McDowell pro- 
duced one which is marked as No. 38 P. The whole context 
of this dispatch shows that Porter was at the time of writing it 
without any information from Pope, and eagerly awaiting it. 
He pleads, "Please let me know your designs." After Mc- 
Dowell had presented it to the board and it had been read. 
Porter with a listless curiosity took it up, when his eye fell 
upon the date obscurely written in the corner, "August 29, 
6 P.M." This settles the matter. The 4.30 order was not re- 
ceived until after 6 p.m., August 29, 1862. It was received 
later, and, if later, it was received too late to make the attack 
it directed. 

But had it been delivered earlier, as it ought to have been, 
Porter would not have made the attack. He could not make 
it. He could not attack upon the flank, much less upon the 
rear, of Jackson's force, as he was ordered to do. He knew 
that a great force had come to Porter's front of which the 
order showed his commanding general knew nothing. This 



382 William Walter Phelps 

new force of the enemy blocked his way, and he could attack 
the flank or the rear of Jackson only by annihilating the force 
of Longstreet. Longstreet had twenty-five thousand men in 
front of Porter; Jackson had twenty-three thousand in front, 
but to his right; and Porter had what McDowell hnd left him, 
nine thousand. Porter could attack and lay their bodies at 
the feet of Longstreet's guns. The gentleman from Indiana 
[Mr. Browne] thought he ought to have done so, as he thought 
that the charge at Balaklava was war and not a spectacle. 
Porter thought otherwise, and his opinion seems to have been 
api^roved by General Grant, General Schofield, General Terry, 
and General Getty. He must bear this difference of opinion 
between himself and the gentleman from Indiana in such com- 
pany as this. 

It is charged that Porter did not know at that time that 
Longstreet's forces were before him. What evidence shows 
that he had this knowledge on the afternoon of the 29th of 
August, 1862? First, the whole tenor of his dispatches shows 
that he had watched the progress of the enemy's forces and 
had been constantly expecting Longstreet's appearance. On 
the 27th Porter says in a dispatch, No. 20, "Everything has 
moved up north," and says that he gets his information from 
an intercepted letter of Lee's. McDowell knew it, and said 
that Longstreet was coming through Thoroughfare Gap 
(volume i., page 349), and McDowell says he told Porter all 
he knew. Again, in the dispatch that Porter sent at six 
o'clock, August 29th, asking Pope for information, he says: 

"From the masses of dust on our right, and from reports of 
scouts, I think the enemy are moving largely that way." 

Earlier in the day Porter had captured prisoners from 
Longstreet's army. At noon McDowell showed him Buford's 
dispatch, which said that a large force had passed Gainesville, 
only three miles off, before nine o'clock that morning. (Volume 
i., page 82.) At about that time the enemy fired musketry at 
McDowell and Porter while their forces were together, and 
during all that afternoon ^L'lrshall and Morell were flying over 
the country testing the enemy at every point, and reported in 



His Life and Public Services 383 

a dozen messages that they found him everywhere present in 
front and in strong force. (Dispatches 29 to 31, both inclus- 
ive, volume i., pages 333 to 335, 380 to 382.) These were the 
means by which Porter gained his information and he testified 
that he had it before the court-martial in 1862: 

"To begin, the fundamental averment of the order upon 
which it all rests is entirely untrue. That averment is that my 
line of march as pursued under the joint order above referred 
to brought me in on the enemy's right flank. The fact is that 
my line of march as so pursued brought me not in on the 
enemy's right flank, but it brought me directly upon the front 
of a separate force of the enemy from ten to fifteen thousand 
strong, of the presence of which thus directly in my front 
General Pope, when he wrote the order, was wholly ignorant." 

Do gentlemen want better evidence than this? Here is 
Pope's announcement on the 27th that the enemy is coming. 
Here is McDowell's testimony that he knew on the morning 
of the 28th that the enemy was coming through the gap. 
Here are prisoners taken on the morning of the 29th, and here 
are Marshall and Morell in a dozen messages in the afternoon 
of August 29th confirming his knowledge. And here, as well 
as anywhere else, let me say that I do not find that the new 
testimony, whether obtained from loyal or Union sources, in- 
troduces anything new. It only serves to confirm what Porter 
and his witnesses had testified to in the trial. 

These were the offences. What was the court-martial that 
passed the sentence? It was composed of nine soldiers, 
gathered hastily in this city out of the gloomy atmosphere of 
defeat. They sat within the roar of the enemy's artillery and 
their faces were black with the smoke of battle. They were 
honest and honorable men, but they \vere human, and when 
a stern Secretary of War who made and unmade generals at 
his will ordered them to vote and go, they voted and went. 
When they voted, they gave, just as you and I would have 
done, to their country the benefit of the doubt. They sat 
forty-five days; they gave the accused thirteen days out of 
them. They neglected to produce any of his witnesses for 



SH William Walter Phelps 

whom he asked, but Stanton's order was read in the morning 
and they closed the testimony that day and went. 

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Keifer] said this was a 
"most august tribunal." Has he forgotten the Long Parlia- 
ment and its prompt obedience and adjournment at the 
command of Cromwell, compared with which this " august 
tribunal" was a slow coach? 

They voted and went. The world will never know but that 
it was by a vote of five to four that Stanton got his will. I 
hope it was not so. For one judge left the bench and went to 
the witness-box to testify for conviction, and four other judges 
received promotion within two weeks of the time they rendered 
their judgment. I wisli the world on this point might appro- 
priate the exclusive information of the gentleman from Michi- 
gan [Mr. Cutcheon]. He says: "The nine able generals who 
tried him with all the essential facts before them said there 
could be but one verdict." This is the information that we 
want, the unanimity of the nine generals, but unfortunately it 
is confined to that gentleman, and history may not appropriate 
it. He has, too, exclusive information, for which Englishmen 
would i)ay a million of pounds. They would give that or 
more to make Admiral Byng a subordinate and the commander 
of a single ship. It would wipe out a bloody page in British 
histor)', and the stinging epigram of Voltaire, who thought 
that the English had to kill every now and then a brave 
admiral to encourage the rest. The gentleman from Michigan 
had, also, exclusive, but this time inaccurate, knowledge of the 
course of history. He says, "Impartial history will declare 
that there could be but one verdict," yet tlie report of tlie 
minority which he signed calls attention to the opinion of a 
writer which it calls "a careful military historian, the author 
of perhaps the best history of our civil war that has been writ- 
ten." The report says that "he was supplied with ample 
facilities to inform himself and so situated that he can and 
does write without prejudice or passion." This historian, the 
Comte de Paris, writes: 

"Impartial history should censure Lee's lieutenant rather 
than Pope's for his inaction during the 29th; and whether the 



His Life and Public Services 385 

latter did or did not neglect the orders of his chief, it must be 
acknowledged that Porter's mere presence in front of Long- 
street condemned forces outnumbering his own to remain 
inactive which otherwise might, with great advantage to the 
Confederate cause, have been employed to attack Porter or to 
re-enforce Jackson." 

How happened my accurate friend from Michigan to make 
this great mistake? It came naturally from the unwillingness 
of his side to look at any new evidence. He read the first 
edition of this history, which censured Porter, and neglected 
to read the new edition, where the princely author, having 
read the new evidence, dared, like Grant and Schofield and 
Terry, to change his opinion in the presence of new and con- 
clusive facts. And inasmuch as the ability, fidelity, and im- 
partiality of the Comte de Paris have been so generously 
avouched by our opponents, let me read what was his final 
opinion: 

"His attack"— 

Speaking of that which the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. 
Browne] wished him to make on the night of August 29th, so 
that the country might have seen another Balaklava — 

" His attack, therefore, could not have produced the results 
upon which the general-in-chief had counted. In spite of the 
impossibility of his executing literally Pope's order, and what- 
ever may have been the orders given him by McDowell during 
the day. Porter might undoubtedly have pressed the enemy 
more closely. Perhaps he might even have obtained a partial 
success before Wilcox's arrival. But under no circumstances 
could this movement have had the slightest effect upon the 
result of the engagement which was now taking place on the 
right of the Federal army, for Longstreet could have resisted 
Porter with forces superior to the latter without being obliged 
to detach a single man from that engagement. Therefore 
impartial history should censure Lee's lieutenant rather than 
Pope's for his inaction during the 29th, etc." 

But it is scarcely fair to leave the gentleman from Michigan 
alone to bear the errors which the side he so ably but inaccur- 



2S 







86 William Walter Phelps 



ately defended has everywhere made, I have time now to 
allude to a misrepresentation, unintentionally made, of the 
opinions held with reference to the conduct of the trial by 
Reverdy Johnson. One gentleman assumed that this august 
tribunal, which closed its evidence upon the day that the 
Secretary of War ordered, which sent one of its judges to the 
witness-box and saw four others promoted within two weeks of 
the verdict, was all right, because Reverdy Johnson had said: 

" Whatever may be the result, neither General Porter nor his 
friends can have any ground of complaint against the court. 
I consider the trial to have been perfectly fair." 

This would have been a great help to the character of this 
august tribunal had it been true; unfortunately it was a news- 
paper story; fortunately I have the newspaper in which it was 
published, and across its lying face are written these words: 
" False, absolutely false. — R. J." 

Here is the newspaper, and here is the indorsement, and 
here is the letter written by Reverdy Johnson, in which he 
says: 

" I have obtained a copy of the Chronicle, and inclose you 
the article on the reply. The fact it states as to what I said 
in the presence of high officials of the Government is entirely 
false." 

The generals who sat on the court-martial voted and went 
back to the fight. They hoped they had done their duty, but 
feared. Their uneasiness increased when lawyers, soldiers, 
and States began to examine their report. They examined it 
sitting apart from the noise of battle and they weighed calmly 
the evidence. Lawyers like Daniel Lord, Sidney Bartlett, B. 
R. Curtis, J. G. Abbott, William D. Shipman, and Charles 
O'Conor declared over their own signatures that the original 
verdict was against the original evidence. Said Daniel Lord: 

"At the time of General Porter's trial I read the proceedings 
with astonishment at the testimony received and acted on, and 
am convinced that the trial was substantially conducted on an 
order to convict." 



His Life and Public Services 3^7 

Said Judge Curtis: 

" I think General Porter was improperly convicted on the 
evidence before the court which tried him, and he is at liberty 
to use this opinion when and where he chooses." 

Said Bartlett: 

" You are entitled to my judgment in the matter, which is 
that the evidence fails to support the charges against you, and 
that acquittal instead of conviction should have been the 
result." 

Said Abbott: 

" The finding of the court seems to me so unwarranted by 
the whole evidence that I should be glad to think it was the 
judgment of a tribunal utterly illegal and not recognized by 
the laws of the land." 

Said Judge Shipman: 

" With all deference to the members of the court, I thought 
then, and still think, their conclusions unwarranted by the 
evidence." 

Said Charles O'Conor: 

" I am convinced that a new trial ought to be had in the case 
of Fitz-John Porter. There is no adequate evidence of the 
misconduct alleged, and the record leaves it very doubtful 
whether any opinion was ever formed against him which can 
justly be regarded officially authoritative." 

These lawyers, in writing, without pay, over their own signa- 
tures, thus declare that on the original evidence Porter should 
have been acquitted, and asked that the President of the 
United States should open the case. The President who put 
the last signature to the verdict expressed to a governor of 
New Jersey his ardent wish that it might be opened. 

Governor Newell writes to Governor Randolph : 

"I had several conversations with President Lincoln. The 



388 William Walter Phelps 

President was much interested, and said cheerfully that he 
would gladly grant a reopening if any new evidence exculpa- 
tory of General Porter could be adduced. He said that he 
had no prejudice, but had been obliged to form his opinion 
from Judge Holt's examination, as in his multitude of cares 
he liad not been able to make a personal investigation." 

The charge has been made that notwithstanding these senti- 
ments President Lincoln refused an application for a review of 
the case. No application was ever made. A few months after 
the judgment of the court-martial, Edward Everett, Robert C. 
Winthro]), Amos A. Lawrence, and others, of their own mo- 
tion and without the knowledge of General Porter, prepared 
an eloquent memorial to the President, in which they asked 
him to reconsider the proceedings of the court-martial. The 
memorial got into the newspapers, as anything signed by such 
illustrious names naturally would, but was never presented. 
General Porter heard of it and sent his earnest request to Mr. 
Everett that no such action should be taken. He said wisely 
that it was premature. Another, who became President, and 
whose presence upon that court-martial gave its decision 
greater weight, on the iSth of January, 1875, moved in this 
very House that a board of examination might be appointed 
who should receive the new evidence which was offered. He 
introduced this resolution unsolicited, and wrote to General 
Porter that he believed it would be adopted; and here is the 
resolution: 

''Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled. That it shall be 
the duty of the President of the United States to convene a 
board of officers of high rank in the army, unconnected with 
the armies or transactions in question, to examine the evidence 
alleged to have been discovered by and to be in the possession 
of Fitz-John Porter, unattainable at the time of his trial, and 
report what, if any, bearing such evidence, if substantiated, 
would have in the findings and sentence of court-martial in 
his case." 

And here is the letter, with that signature so familiar and so 



His Life and Public Services 389 

dear to many of us. I present it now because it has been 
made public before: 

"Washington, D. C, February 19, 1875, 

" Dear Sir : Your two letters came duly to hand, together 
with the pamphlet. I owe you an apology for not answering 
you sooner. 

" I introduced the bill to which you refer, not because I was 
conscious of any intentional wrong done you by the court, for 
I have never concurred in the severe reflections which have 
from time to time appeared in the public press on the motives 
and conduct of that court; but I am willing that any new evi- 
dence you may have shall be presented to the Government in 
an official form, and reported to the President by a board of 
officers who were in no way connected with the trial or with 
the operations of the army to which the trial related. 

" I have spoken to several members of the Committee on 
Military Affairs, and understand them to be willing to report 
the bill to the House. They have not yet had an opportunity 
to do so, but I hope they will before the session closes. 

" I shall consider your pamphlet as confidential, unless you 

otherwise direct me. 

" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"J. A. Garfield. 
" General FiTZ-JoHN Porter, 

" Morristown, N. J." 

Gentlemen who have used their wit to belittle the dignity 
and methods of the advisory board and claim great friendship 
for General Garfield would emplov their wit better in tellins 
how it differs from the board proposed in this resolution by 
him. Garfield proposed that the President should appoint. 
Garfield proposed that the appointees should be officers of high 
rank in the army. Garfield proposed that this board should 
examine the evidence alleged to have been discovered by and 
to be in possession of Fitz-John Porter, unattainable at the 
time of his trial, and report what, if any, bearing such evidence, 
if substantiated, would have in the findings and sentence of the 
court-martial in his case. How does the advisory board here 
proposed and described differ from the one whose report is 



390 William Walter Phelps 

before us ? There has not been even an attempt to show the 
difference. One gentleman, when pressed, exclaimed, "Gar- 
field meant to have no such board as this." 

Two of the board were so prejudiced against the accused 
that they at first refused to serve. Did the gentlemen object 
because one of the judges had no prejudice ? This resolution 
introduced by Garfield shows that he was willing to have the 
proceedings of the court-martial open and its findings reviewed 
by an advisory board. And unless our opponents can destroy 
the records of the Forty-third Congress they should cease their 
efforts to misrepresent his position. I draw my conclusions 
from this public act of General Garfield. As his friend, I 
cannot produce his private letters to show how near under 
provocation he came to breaking the secrecy on which honor 
shut his lips, and if I did this dishonor to his memory I should 
want to find something stronger for my case than the Cox 
letter, where he says: 

" I have not yet made, in the light of the new testimony, a 
careful strategic study of the field and map as you have done." 

Can there be a stronger comment on the impropriety of this 
practice than the effort to claim an opinion from General 
Garfield out of a letter in which he admits that he had made 
no careful study of the subject? I, too, have letters, and they 
have allusions to this subject not unfavorable to the side I ad- 
vocate. Here are two of them, but they are marked " Per- 
sonal"; and I will not read them to hurt the dead that I may 
help the living. 

A third President listened, approved, and acted. He named 
a board of examination just like that suggested by Garfield. 
He put on it " officers of high rank in the army, unconnected 
with the armies or transactions in question." He put on it 
Generals Schofield, Terry, and Getty, men whom the gallant 
Sherman declared to be "officers than whom three better do 
not exist in the army." They made, as Garfield suggested, 
"an examination of the evidence alleged to have been dis- 
covered by and to be in the possession of Fitz-Jolin Porter, 
unattainable at the time of his trial," and tlaey reported that 



His Life and Public Services 391 

the bearing of such evidence should reverse the findings and 
sentence of the court-martial in his case. They had new 
evidence from the Confederates against whom General Porter 
was ordered to march. They had new evidence in the dis- 
patches of General Porter which had been concealed or 
withheld. They had accurate maps of the ground and the 
disposition of the forces. On these they report and acquit 
Porter of all guilt. Gentlemen hesitate because they are un- 
willing that the proceedings of this court-martial, this august 
tribunal, should be reviewed. They claim that the review of 
a court-martial is unconstitutional. I do not agree with this 
view. They speak as if court-martials were the Supreme 
Court, and established by the Constitution. They were, how- 
ever, created by the Legislature, and the power that created 
can review, correct, or destroy. But the action of the House 
to-day is not a review of the court-martial or its proceedings. 
We are hearing no appeal from that court. We are exercising 
a frequent and undisputed right. We are putting into the 
army of the United States an illustrious general whose ser- 
vices there will be valuable to the Commonwealth. If our 
action seems to reflect upon the view of General Porter's 
merits which the court-martial expressed, that is an unpleasant 
discrepancy between that board and this House. Let the 
verdict stand and go into history. But outside of the courts 
and irrespective of that court's decision the world now knows 
and admits that General Porter was a good soldier and suf- 
fered a wrong. And Congress, recognizing the inexorable 
logic of facts, accepts the conclusion and completes a pardon 
which the Executive began. It were as well to claim that the 
pardon of the President overruled the court-martial as that 
our action in restoring General Porter has overruled it. 

The advisory board did not sit to review the trial of the 
court-martial. They sat to review a case in which the parties 
were the same, but the evidence was very different. Their 
report contributed to that general conviction and that popular 
knowledge on which with the report we are acting. On the 
facts derived from this report and elsewhere we are asked to 
restore General Porter to his position in the army. He does 
not ask money for services he was always ready and willing to 



392 William Walter Phelps 

perform. He does not ask compensation for suffering and 
loss almost unparalleled in history. He only asks that the 
ranks of the army from which he was driven should be open 
to receive, and that the sword which was taken from him 
should be placed at his side. Shall this scanty justice be 
refused him? While I make the appeal I pause to admit his 
faults — serious faults, but excusable; faults, but not crimes. 
He was not a traitor. Punish him if, in his anxiety to furnish 
the information for which Burnside, McClellan, and Lincoln 
constantly pressed him, he spoke with a frankness and free- 
dom which was characteristic of his nature, but contrary to 
the military discipline when he spoke of one who was his 
superior in the field. Remember that dispatches were coming 
from Lincoln, from McClellan, from Burnside, saying that 
their only knowledge of the momentous events transpiring in 
the front must come through him, and that, in grateful obedi- 
ence to three men whom he especially honored and trusted, 
he wrote just what he thought; and remember, too, that his- 
tory has stamped just what he thought and wrote as the truth. 
For this breach of military discipline, however, let him be 
punished. He had no faith in his commanding officer, and 
he improperly communicated his suspicions and dislikes to the 
President of the United States and to his commander-in-chief. 
This was an offence, and so was Washington's, when on the 
hot Sunday at Monmouth he cursed General Lee loudly for 
his cowardice or folly. But this offence is slight and has been 
already punished. Don't think of this little fault. Think 
of his great virtues. Remember how he fought on the 30th! 
That order came in time and from a superior who at last had 
learned his surroundings. And with Porter at their head the 
Fifth Army Corps charged into the gates of hell, and into the 
jaws of death. This was magnificent, and this was also war 
— war at its sternest. They went in six thousand — they came 
out leaving twenty-two hundred on the field. It was a loss to 
Porter of twenty-two hundred friends, for the Fifth Army 
Corps was, and is to-day, and while one veteran survives will 
be, the faithful, unfaltering, loyal friend of its gallant com- 
mander. Give him back to them. 

Mr. Chairman, the chief of the rebellion walked down the 



His Life and Public Services 393 

steps of this Capitol threatening to return and destroy it. He 
attempted its destruction and failed. Yet Jefferson Davis 
walks in freedom. Men who penned our soldiers in Anderson- 
ville and Libby still live. 

Officers trained at West Point, whose treason is not investi- 
gated, for they practised it from the Mississippi to the Poto- 
mac, sit in this House. Shall Porter, innocent in heart if 
erring in act, alone be punished? Must he be a sacrifice for 
a nation? 

The hero of Mexico and Malvern and Manassas asks only 
for justice; if you refuse him justice, I plead, against his 
wishes, for mercy. Take this innocent man from the side of 
Judas and Arnold and place him by the side of those who 
honor him — by the side of Getty and Sykes and Terry and 
Schofield and Grant. 

INTERNATIONAL COMiMERCE 

Speech in the House of Representatives, December 19, 18S4 
The Bill to Regulate International Commerce under discussion 

Mr. Phelps. — I rise to oppose the amendment. The dis- 
cussion begins already to emphasize ihe unwisdom and injustice 
of the bill. It is a vain effort to make a code which shall con- 
trol the management of railways in all cases. But these cases 
are infinite in number, and very nearly infinite in variety. 
How absurd to suppose that all these cases can be held in the 
iron grasp of half a dozen absolute restrictions! Absolute re- 
strictions belong to morals, but have no control in railway 
management, where each case makes its own right and wrong. 
You may say to a man, "Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not 
commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness," for theft, 
adultery, and slander are everywhere and always wrong. But 
you cannot say to a railroad company, "You shall not dis- 
criminate, you shall not rebate, you shall not pool, you shall 
not charge more for a longer haul," because in many cases all 
these methods are right and in many cases they are necessary 
— necessary even to the very existence of the road. And be- 
cause they are necessary often to their very existence the rail- 
ways will elude, evade, and openly transgress the restrictions, 



394 William Walter Phelps 

looking to popular opinion to shield them from the penalty; 
just as the gentleman from Texas, if his life were threatened, 
would, in defending it, violate all laws and escape all punish- 
ment. 

Nor in so doing are the people indifferent to their rights; 
they are watchful of them and are willing to judge the future 
by the past. They see that the laws of man and the laws of 
nature have shielded them in the past; why should they doubt 
them in the future? The law of common carriers in every 
State inhibits injustice and inequality. The laws of nature, 
acting in the sphere of commerce, make the greed and ambi- 
tion of man the instruments of justice and equality. 

They see that united the result has been a constant triumph 
of progress and reform. Does any one dispute history? Are 
there not more railways and better service than ever before? 
Have we not more trains and better, more equipment and bet- 
ter, cheaper and more efficient management everywhere? 

Does the gentleman from Texas deny that goods and pas- 
sengers are carried cheaper by us than anywhere else in the 
world, and cheaper by us now than ever before? Perhaps he 
fears that these great laws of nature have lost their force. 
Have they? Was competition ever more aggressive on water 
and on land? Why, the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Hewitt] cannot take his first excursions over a new road with- 
out seeing from his window the surveying party that already 
lays the deadly parallel. And if you fear that some obstacles 
are too mighty, remember that ten years ago we all said, with 
the Erie, the Central, and the Pennsylvania railways in the 
field, New York can secure no relief except from the resources 
of the national Treasury. But while we sj)oke competition, 
raising $100,000,000 without public knowledge or public 
solicitation, threw the Nickel Plate and West Shore into the 
arena, and there they will remain. 

Nor has the desire to succeed in business ceased to be a 
rule, which includes railway managers in its healthy influence. 

Managers were never more solicitous for business and never 
more ready to make sacrifices to get it. They know that 
rivals are so many they must themselves create and develop it, 
and in a one-sided partnersliip, where the customer gets all 



His Life and Public Services 395 

the benefit, they aid him in its creation or development. I 
challenge contradiction when I say that there never was a time 
when a company that wished to open a mine or a factory could 
get better returns than now. It is almost accurate to say that 
the miner or the manufacturer can fix his own rates for the 
years of experiment. Nor has the power of public opinion 
weakened. It controls the management of railways as a man- 
agement and as individual men. The management knows 
that the surest path to business is that of public favor; that 
the popular road makes money, and to secure this popularity 
they spend money lavishly, they make concessions generously. 
Nor is generally enough stress laid on the character of the 
management and their natural desire as men to have the ap- 
probation of their neighbors and to secure that good report, 
that good reputation which is the highest prize of life. 

Do not confound the managers of whom I speak, and whom 
I honor, with the great speculators in its securities, whom I 
despise. It is the speculators and the stock exchange that re- 
ceive the public attention; it is the railway and its managers 
who deserve it. It is a great injustice to confound them. 
The managers are men of high character and great abilities. 
Theirs is a profession, and they are proud of it. They are 
sure to spend their lives in its practice, and most of them 
practise it in the same railway corporation. They are faith- 
ful, public-spirited, and as a rule honored and beloved by 
those among whom they live and with whom they deal. In 
their desire to retain and deserve this good opinion of their 
vicinage they are more apt to sacrifice their road than the 
public. But the great speculators, unlike you or me or them, 
remote from intercourse with the customers of the road, are 
indifferent to public opinion, and should be curbed. But, 
remember, these men, while tlieir names are allied to the 
roads, almost never interfere with their practical management. 
Their sole interest is in the stock. That they seize; they 
hold it for a day, until they have worked their own wicked 
will on it, and then they cast it out dishonored, to be the prey 
of the next adventurer. If they retain it longer, it is only to 
elect a board of directors which shall suffer them to manipu- 
late the securities, and, that accomplished, their interest ends. 



39^ William Walter Phelps 

The managers of the road meantime go on with their regular 
business, and have no more connection with the speculators 
whose names are in stock circles allied wirh their roads than 
you or I, Mr. Speaker, except the bitter disgust with which 
they see these bad men so confusing the distinction between 
themselves and the actual managers that in the public mind 
they are apt to stand in the same light and receive the same 
censure. 

Let, then, the laws of man and of nature continue their 
work of progress and reform. \\'hy attempt to restrict, why 
pass restrictions which will interfere with these general laws, 
which are working out the results you pretend to wish? Your 
effort is vain; your restrictions will be disregarded. 

INTERSTATE COMMERCE 

Controversy with Mr. Reagan 

January 7, 1885, Mr. Reagan, of Texas, having the floor of the House, 
made a speech reflecting upon Mr. Phelps personally, in reference to 
the position the New Jersey member took in relation to railroads in 
his speech of December 9, 1884. The latter followed Mr. Reagan 
immediately in reply 

Mr. Phelps was recognized, and asked how much time he 
was entitled to. 

The Speaker. — The gentleman from New Jersey is entitled 
to five minutes under the rules of the House. 

Mr. Phelps. — It will be scarcely possible to treat of this 
whole subject, as touched by the gentleman from Texas, in so 
short a time. The time, however, is sufficient for me to say 
that I recognize in his remarks just that intellectual defect, if 
I may say it without offence, which has made it impossible for 
him to prepare a bill which would be operative and therefore 
useful; one that would work, and therefore that could be 
enforced. It is an inability to make proper and natural dis- 
tinctions. I stated what under the laws of trade and nature 
will be; and the gentleman claims that I stated what ought to 
be, as if I were the Almighty, and threatened what should be. 
He has failed to recognize the distinction between a prophecy 



His Life and Public Services 397 

and a threat. I made no threat. I have no power to carry a 
threat into execution, and certainly have no wish to see the 
prophecy fulfilled and the business of this country blocked by 
the gentleman's bill and the action of the railways under it. 
Whether I am a true prophet or not time will show. Whether 
I have grounds for making this prophecy or not the past and 
its history fortunately can show. 

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I now yield to an indiscretion — I cer- 
tainly yield to a very natural feeling of injury, in view of the 
fact that it is the gentleman from Texas who makes this attack 
and seems to inspire it with a certain suggestion of personal 
feeling. I recognize this, I say, with an impression that it is 
unbecoming and unjust. He has been pleased to class me as 
among those citizens of this Republic who by frugality and 
industry, by honorable and honest methods, I hope, have ac- 
cumulated a competence. He has been pleased to call me a 
rich man. If I may make a personal confession — and I make 
it now only under his taunt and in the interest of the truth, 
which we all search for in this great discussion — I can say this: 
If once I enjoyed that distinction, such as it is, which belongs 
to wealth, that distinction has been diminished, has been al- 
most entirely destroyed; and if I were asked where I found the 
origin of my misfortunes, I should be obliged to say that the 
gentleman himself knows the origin; and the gentleman him- 
self lives in the very section and uses the same railway in which 
half a million of dollars intelligently and honestly invested 
were sunk, and apparently were sunk forever, 

I have no hesitation in charging that the railway which 
made his home at Palestine valuable, and gave it distinction 
other than the solitary distinction which it enjoyed before of 
being the residence of an able and patriotic citizen, obtained 
its railway connection, secured its growth and all the advan- 
tages which it now enjoys and which the gentleman from 
Texas himself shares, through the efforts and sacrifices of my- 
self and some dozen of my friends, who, in a New York office, 
agreed to embark in the enterprise. It was an enterprise to 
build a railway which, starting at Houston, should traverse the 
State and open up counties which were then almost worthless 



398 William Walter Phelps 

to connection with the North and the South. This was an 
honorable and a useful purpose; I put in my money cheer- 
fully, and citizens associated with me, of more wealth but with 
equally honest purpose, put in still larger sums. The money 
was expended, dollar for dollar, in the construction of the 
road; we took for it stock at par; we received for it nothing 
else, not even bonds, which we might have sold. 

It was our pride to test and settle this question: Could a 
railway be built honestly, with each dollar that was actually in- 
vested represented and no other, no watering of stock or bonds, 
and pay a fair interest upon the money invested? So dollar 
after dollar, to the amount of some millions, each one of which 
passed through my hands, was faithfully sent down to the 
State of Texas and put into the Great Northern Railroad. It 
was invested in buying land, in making cuts and fillings, in 
bridging streams, in purchasing and laying the rails upon the 
road which now connects the Gulf of Mexico with the great 
system of railways by which Palestine has become an import- 
ant station on a great through route. That was the result for 
Palestine and Texas. What has been the result for us? Our 
money is in that railroad, honestly and carefully expended as 
a man expends his own, and as yet I have not received one 
dollar of interest upon that stock, nor do I ever expect to 
obtain any. The investment would be to me and to my friends 
an absolute loss, that money would all have been lost, except 
for this precaution: I foresaw the benefits that would be re- 
ceived by the gentleman from Texas and others who owned 
land along the route, so I wisely made some investment in it 
myself. 

The lands did receive the benefit — were so far benefited by 
this New York money which was made to enrich them, and 
among them the farm and other real estate of my friend in 
Palestine, that our loss, although not recouped, was somewhat 
broken by their appreciation in value. Land on this road now 
sells for two, three, or four times its value at the time this 
undertaking was begun. 

If, then, this railroad has accomplished so much for his sec- 
tion; if it has made us who gave it lose all of the money which 
built it; if we built it nor asked one dollar from the gentle- 



His Life and Public Services 399 

man, though his farm was sure to get an advantage from it; if 
not one dollar was received from any other citizen of Texas, 
is it strange that having had this experience in that State and 
similar experience in other States we are hurt at the reception 
we receive here when we get up and speak not from theory 
but from experience, not immodestly, not arrogantly, telling 
only what we know, even if we do in the interest of truth tell 
the gentleman from Texas that we speak of actual knowledge 
while he s[)eaks only as a theorist. 

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to show exactly 
how each one of iiis four restrictions — that against discrimina- 
tion, against rebates, against pooling, against charging more 
for shorter than for longer hauls, — all of them would injure 
every single acre of his farming land around Palestine, and 
crush, as if under an avalanche, every growing industry in its 
streets. 

Mr. Reagan. — In the first place, Mr. Speaker, I wish to 
disabuse the mind of the gentleman from New Jersey that I 
was in any way animated by any feeling of special malevolence 
against him, as such was not the fact. I was dealing with a 
great public question, and to the language I then used I refer 
the House and the country to see whether the animadversions 
which I felt it my duty to make are justly founded or not. 

I should regret, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman had his in- 
vestment sacrificed in building up the country or its railroads, 
but I apprehend the gentleman's picture is deficient in the 
statement of all the facts. He says the investment was made 
in that railroad. There were two of them, but both were under 
one charter. One of them received sixteen sections of six hun- 
dred and forty acres of land to the mile, and the other received 
twenty sections of six hundred and forty acres of land to the 
mile. The one which received the smaller amount received 
a bonus, upon which I am now paying a tax, to the amount 
of $150,000, from the poor county in which I live, in order to 
induce the building of a depot there. And I contributed also 
my full portion of about $50,000 in money and property in 
order to secure the building of a depot of the other road at 
that place. 

Therefore, while the gentleman is speaking of the munifi- 



400 William Walter Phelps 

cence of his liberality, he ought to remember that he and the 
others to whom he has referred received liberal charters from 
the State and most generous treatment on the part of the 
county in which I live. 

I wish to say further, that notwithstanding the magnificent 
treatment on the part of the State, the county, and district in 
which I live to these railroads, there is not one there to-day 
who would desire to see any injury befall these railroads, so 
far as 1 know. We wish them to prosper. We regard them 
as valuable, as excellent servants; but we regard them also as 
detestable masters. We do not wish them as masters. We 
do not intend to have them as masters. We wish them well. 
W'e hope they may be profitable. In view of the liberal char- 
ters granted to the roads in which the gentleman is a stock- 
holder, besides the bonus of land and money given by others 
in the State, I do not think that his remarks on this subject 
were quite what they ought to have been. 

Mr. Phelps. — I\Ir. Speaker, I rise to oppose the amend- 
ment. I did not mean to say the railroads did not receive 
any aid from the State of Texas, nor do I think I made any 
statement as to warrant that conclusion. What I said was, 
that there was no citizen of Texas asked to subscribe, or who 
did, so far as I know, subscribe one dollar of his private funds 
to the construction of this railroad. It was the gift exclusively 
of Northern capital. 

With reference to the generosity of the State I want to say 
this: The inducement to build this railroad, for at that time 
the unoccupied country offered no business to encourage its 
construction, was the formal act of the State by which it 
agreed to give us its bonds. I regret that truth requires me 
to state what I had no intention of stating, and what is now 
drawn out by the comments of the gentleman, that the State of 
Texas, having agreed with us that in consideration of building 
this road it would give us of those bonds a certain number 
to the mile, did absolutely refuse to keep its bargain, and did 
repudiate its obligation. 

Every effort was made by ajipeals to the Legislature and to 
the Executive and elsewhere throughout the State to obtain 
a fulfilment of their promise, but the State persisted. The 



His Life and Public Services 401 

bonds were prepared, signed, and ready for delivery, but 
Texas refused to issue and deliver them to the railroad com- 
pany. Had the State of Texas kept its promises, had it not 
repudiated its just obligations, and had it given to us the $8000 
to the mile that were promised — a repudiation and refusal, 
which they wisely made after the railway was constructed and 
built — I believe that before this time we might have received 
some interest upon our investment. As it is, the investment 
is there; it produces no results for the investors. And the 
road is there; it is run satisfactorily and produces valuable 
results to Texas and its citizens who use it. It satisfies all 
their reasonable wants; it is giving them rates of freight and 
passage cheaper than any known outside of the United States; 
and yet we are not getting from it one dollar of interest. And 
while the gentleman from Texas tells us that the charter is so 
good and the State is so good that we shall see in time a 
profit, are we impatient when we complain in the face of his 
statement that he would be glad to administer the investment 
himself under the laws of the United States, that we ought to 
be paid some of the interest of the last twelve years before our 
property is taken from us ? 

I would like to show, Mr. Speaker, in the three minutes re- 
maining, how the first restriction imposed by the gentleman 
would affect his own home at Palestine. He would forbid all 
discrimination. In the shipment of all classes of freights 
brought to the same station at the same time, he would en- 
force, under penalty, equal dispatch. If the railway moved 
one parcel before another it would be punished. Well, let us 
see how such a provision would work at Palestine. Let us 
suppose three kinds of freight are delivered at this station for 
transportation on the same day. Let us assume that one is a 
shipment of fruit, one a shipment of coal, and another a 
shipment of grain. They are delivered at the Palestine station 
at the same time, and must therefore, under the Reagan law, 
be carried off at the same time. The daily freight train comes 
along to its. regular morning task with the usual number of 
vacant cars ready for the ordinary needs of Palestine, but the 
three shipments make more than the usual tonnage. The 

capacity of the empty cars is not sufficient for all the freight, 
26 



402 William Walter Phelps 

and only part of it can be taken. The wise conductor, re- 
membering the law and knowing its penalty, glances at the 
three piles of freight, then at the empty cars on his train, and 
recognizes the fact that he has not accommodations for the 
whole. He signals the engineer, the whistle is blown, and 
the train goes southward to Houston, ignoring fruit, coal, and 
corn. All three classes of goods are left at the station. What 
is the result? The fruit, which might have been carried for- 
ward without injury, is either injured or destroyed by the de- 
lay. The coal, which was needed at Houston to keep in blast 
an iron furnace, is left at Palestine; operations stop at the 
furnace, its fires burn low, and its workers stand in enforced 
idleness — loss of capital and of work. 

The law of the gentleman from Texas must be charged 
with the loss of this work and capital and with the loss or de- 
struction of the fruit. And with what is it credited? What 
has it accomplished? Nothing; and all this is done in order 
that the grain, which might have been delivered days after 
without loss or injury to anybody, shall have the same facili- 
ties and be delivered at the same time as the coal and the fruit. 
It has estopped the owner of the grain from assailing his mem- 
ber of Congress at Palestine with the complaint that some one's 
coal and some one's fruit were carried by the railway before his 
grain; that it was an outrageous discrimination, and that he 
demands that the laws of the United States shall be made to 
prevent such outrages. And that is all it has done. 

[During the delivery of the foregoing remarks, when the five 
minutes of Mr. Phelps had expired, Mr. Kean of New Jersey 
obtained the floor and yielded his time to Mr. Phelps.] 

INCREASING SUBSIDIES TO MAIL-CARRYING 

STEAxMERS 

Speech in the Mouse of Representatives, February 13, 18S5 

Mr. Phelis. — Mr. Chairman, if 1 get the opportunity I 
shall move to amend the section by striking out the limit of 
$600,000, so that the net revenue of our foreign mail may 



His Life and Public Services 403 

be placed without reduction in llic hands of the Postmaster- 
General to use for these great objects. The net revenue last 
year was $1,700,000. This surely is not too much to expend 
for objects every way worthy, and especially dear at this time 
to the hearts of the American people. It is to revive Ameri- 
can commerce and to re-create the merchant marine, of which 
our fathers were so proud. The sum is small compared with 
the last sums spent by our rivals in these great enterprises. 
They give all their net revenue; more, they give all their gross 
revenue; more, they add to it all that their treasuries will 
allow. 

England gave last year a million and a half of dollars more 
than her gross receipts, making nearly five millions; France 
gave four and a half millions; Italy two millions; Austria one 
million; Spain one million; little Holland $300,000. Our 
great Republic gave $327,000! Are you proud of this, gentle- 
men of the committee? And why should we treat our foreign 
service so much worse than our domestic? Will members be- 
lieve it? We sent our steamships the dreary width of the 
Pacific and paid them 2f cents per mile. We sent our steam- 
ships down the coast that they might deliver the mail in sight 
of their homes,' and paid them 57 cents per mile; and if you 
want to carry in your minds a neat illustration of the crying 
injustice of this discrimination, remember that to carry the 
mail from Brashear to Galveston, a single night's trip, we paid 
a company $50,000; and at the same time we paid the vessels 
that carried the American flag to China, to Japan, and to 
Australia the munificent sum of $14,849. 

If we pay 57 cents a mile to carry our mails on the coast, is 
50 cents a mile too much to pay the American owner who sends 
his steamer half way round the globe? 

England, and America, and France are struggling for the 
commerce of South .'\merican ports. England sells in them 
one hundred and twelve millions of her products; France, 
seventy-seven millions, and the United States, sixty-four mil- 
lions. Why this anomaly? Our neighbors on this continent 
prefer our manners and our merchandise, but American men 
and American manufactures can reach them only by Liver- 
pool. A double trip across the Atlantic is a burden which 



404 William Walter Phelps 

crushes even American energy and hope; and we have to see 
the country tributary to these ports supplied from the Euro- 
pean market. What ought to be our home market is left for 
foreigners to profit by. 

Non-manufacturing countries everywhere are the markets 
for which civilized nations compete. We can secure them 
only by sending our flag and our mail-bags. Trade never 
fails to follow the flag. Do you doubt it? Do you doubt that 
these are the pioneers that open the way, or that when the 
way is open American manufacturers can not walk profitably 
in it? 

Look at our commerce under this medicine. Look at the 
countries where we have managed to secure some kind of 
regular or irregular communication. Since 1866 our Mexican 
trade has multiplied four times; our Central American trade 
eighteen times; and our Australian trade three times. 

Our exports to Mexico were $3,700,000, now they are $14,- 
300,000; to Central America were $120,000, now they are 
$2,000,000; to Australia were $3,400,000, now they are $9,- 
600,000. And yet these are the very countries where British 
trade fights us with the resources of a generous government 
and the determination to check and destroy our competition. 
Last year Great Britain paid the steamships that carried her 
flag and mail-bags to Mexico and the West Indies $420,000; 
we gave $9,800. She gave for the encouragement of her trade 
in China and the East Indies $1,700,000; we gave $14,800. 
Does the American merchant have a fair chance with the 
British merchant? We ask that he should have some aid in 
this bitter competition. And my friend from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Bayne], generally considerate and wise, strives to frighten 
us from giving it by raising the ghost of a subsidy. This is 
too bad, for the average member starts at the ghost of a 
subsidy as Macbeth started at the ghost of Banquo. And yet 
this ghost ought "to down." This is no subsidy. A subsidy 
is a gift without consideration. Or it is a payment so exces- 
sive as to grossly overmatch the service rendered and to be- 
come a gratuity. Here is no gift, no excessive payment, no 
subsidy. The provision asks only a payment scarcely ade- 
quate to the service rendered; a service vital to the interests 



His Life and Public Services 405 

of our manufactures and to the men they employ; a service 
vital to the existence of American shipping. 

I hope, Mr. Chairman, that this provision will pass, for it is 
the first step in a policy which will revive our manufactures, 
employ our labor, and place again in the ports of the world 
the vessels of American merchants busied in the pursuits of 
peace. 

CHINESE INDEMNITY 

Speech in the House of Representatives, February 13, 1886, on the bill 
to indemnify Chinese for damages done them in a miners' riot in 
Wyoming Territory in 18S5 

Mr. Phelps. — Their houses were burned; their goods were 
pillaged ; twenty-eight of them were killed and fifteen wounded. 
And the only provocation was that they would not join in a 
strike. That is the case, and the question is, " What are we 
going to do about it? " and the answer ought to be, and I be- 
lieve will be, "Do what the administration recommends and 
what this bill provides for and pay for the property destroyed." 
Not for charity's sake, but for solid reasons. Because it is 
good policy, as urged by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. 
Worthington] ; because it is a single reciprocity for a hundred 
cases, where China has paid an indemnity to us, as urged 
by his colleague, Mr. Hitt, and because it is an international 
obligation, as urged by the gentleman from Massachusetts 
[Mr. Rice]. 

It is good policy, because we have more property in China 
than China has in the United States. We need millions to 
measure our property, thousands will measure theirs; and if 
we change the old rule of practice and adopt the new one, 
that the National Government may throw the obligation to de- 
fend the rights of foreigners on one of its members, call it 
State, Territory, province, or vice-royalty, the United States 
will in the future lose a great deal more than China. If the 
new rule had prevailed in the East, the great fortunes which 
have been brought to this country, and whose splendor is yet 
conspicuous in Wall Street and Fifth Avenue, would never 
have got across the Pacific. But there is a moral obligation 



4o6 William Walter Phelps 

stronger than these considerations of policy. We ought to pay 
this indemnity to China, because China has paid indemnities 
to us in a score, perhaps in a hundred cases similar to this, 
only less meritorious. 

The history of our diplomatic relations with China for nearly 
fifty years has been only the history of prompt and greedy 
claims for indemnity on our part and of prompt and generous 
payment on its part. It has paid for the rights of every 
American citizen when violated. It has paid for the violated 
rights of Chinese subjects when they were connected with ours; 
as when they paid a Chinese landlord, whose house was de- 
stroyed by a mob, because an American leased it, and as 
when they paid for the property and clothing of native helpers, 
which was lost in the service of American missionaries. This 
is the way China paid indemnities up to 1858. In this fashion 
she paid them in detail, then she paid them in gross. She 
took more than $700,000, gave it to the United States Govern- 
ment, and said: "Take this and pay your countrymen." 

We took it, we paid all claims generously, with twelve-per- 
cent, interest ; but the generosity of China was so ample that 
after all this we had left nearly one-third of the original sum 
to return to China. China did this and shamed the grudging 
spirit in which Christian countries pay their international bills. 

This is the moral obligation, but there is a legal one — the 
international obligation. The United States has treaties with 
the Empire of China. In these treaties she promised to pro- 
tect Chinese subjects. The United States has failed to keep 
its covenants. It did not protect Chinese subjects, and it is 
liable in damages for a broken contract unless it can establish 
and maintain as a doctrine of international law that when a 
nation makes a treaty with another nation and breaks one of 
its covenants it can shift its liability by saying that it was the 
covenant and therefore the liability of one of its members. 

Unfortunately it is easy to declare this doctrine, but it seems 
impossible to establish and maintain. All writers on inter- 
national law from Grotius to Woolsey have examined and 
rejected it. We have accepted it in declaration but have 
always rejected it in practice. We have generally asserted 
this doctrine most vehen\ently at the very moment we were 



His Life and Public Services 407 

about to transgress it. Our habit has been to assert bad law 
and practise good. We did this in the famous case at New 
Orleans. A mob destroyed the property of Spanish subjects. 
Her Spanish Majesty demanded indemnity. 

The powerful voice of Daniel Webster was heard in reply. 
He declared this bad law magnificently and referred them to 
the State of Louisiana and its courts. Her Spanish Majesty 
ignored all this eloquence in declaration of bad law and asked 
for the usual practice, and the Secretary of State recommended 
Congress to vote the indemnity and say nothing more of the 
State's liability. But more significant yet was the case in 
China at the time of the Anglo-Chinese war. China, learning 
the verbal tricks of civilization, concluded she would declare 
bad law and see the result. She told our Department of State 
that the vice-royalty of Canton was the party liable and that in 
its tribunals the American claimants must find redress. Our 
Secretary, Lewis Cass, said little against the bad law in the 
plea. — How could he? — but insisted on the usual good practice, 
and China, the nation, the empire, paid the bill. 

And in European countries the same uniformity of action 
prevails, accompanied still in some cases by the same declara- 
tion of the bad law, that would relieve national obligation and 
substitute local. Indeed, comprehensive as was the claim made 
yesterday by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Rice], 
that no text-book in its summary of principles and no civilized 
nation in its practice had ever followed this bad law, I believe 
it is the truth. If, then, in this case we put the bad law for 
the first time into practice against a semi-barbarous nation, 
public opinion will say we did it because China was weak and 
could not enforce its rights, and the world will compare the 
pagan civilization of the Chinese Empire with the Christian 
civilization of the great American Republic, and not to our 
credit. 

The Chairman. — The time of the gentleman from New 
Jersey [Mr. Phelps] has expired. 

Mr. Henley. — I desire to ask the gentleman from New 
Jersey a question. 

The Chairman. — The time of the gentleman from New 
Jersey has expired. 



4o8 William Walter Phelps 

Mr. Phelps. — I shall be glad to answer the gentleman's 
question if time be given me. 

The Chairman. — The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Mc- 
Creary] is entitled to the floor. 

Mr. Henlev. — Will the gentleman from Kentucky permit 
me to put a question to the gentleman from New Jersey? 

Mr. McCreary. — I yield for that purpose, but I trust the 
gentleman will be very brief. 

Mr. Henley. — It was stated yesterday, and the gentleman 
from New Jersey doubtless heard the statement, that Mr. 
Blaine, when Secretary of State, adopted a different rule from 
that for which the gentleman contends and which is asserted 
by the Committee on Foreign Affairs in presenting this bill; 
in other words, that upon outrages being committed upon 
certain Chinese subjects in the city of Denver and upon in- 
demnity being demanded, xMr. Blaine or Mr. Evarts, I forget 
which 

Mr. McKenna. — Both of them. It was I who made the 
statement yesterday. 

Mr. Henley. — Denied the right to indemnity. I should 
like to hear from the gentleman from New Jersey on that sub- 
ject, because upon these matters everybody knows him to be 
facile princeps. 

Mr. Phelps. — If I answer the gentleman in the way he 
wishes me to do, I do not see that it involves any contradic- 
tion of my statement that Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, Hamil- 
ton Fish, James G. Blaine, and Frederick T. Frelinghuysen 
all made the declarations I have cited. I admitted that the 
declarations had been made by almost all our administrations 
that we were exempt from obligation under a treaty if we could 
refer the party complaining to a local authority or tribunal; 
but at the same time I claimed that there was no break in the 
practice of these very Secretaries, who, after making their 
declarations, followed the fashion of American diplomacy and 
paid the indemnity whenever it was due and demanded. 



His Life and Public Services 409 

POST-OFFICE APPROPRIATION BILL 

Speech in the House of Representatives, May 19, 1886. The question 
under discussion, whether the House should appropriate $375. "oo for 
the transportation of foreign mails, or appropriate $800,000 as provided 
by amendment of the Senate 

Mr. Millard having the floor, said: "I yield the remainder 
of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey." 

The Chairman. — The gentleman has twenty-two minutes 
of his time remaining. 

Mr. Phelps. — This amendment, and especially the action 
of the Senate when they passed it, is full of encouragement to 
the friends of American shipping. Thirty-nine Senators voted 
for the measure; only eighteen voted against it. In the dis- 
cussion and in the division there was no effort to make it a 
party question. Each Senator spoke and each Senator voted 
according to his view of the merits of the question, and on the 
final passage eight Democratic Senators 

Mr. Blount. — I rise to a question of order. 

The Chairman. — The gentleman will state it. 

Mr. Blount. — It is not in order to comment on the opinions 
or action of Senators. 

The Chairman. — The Chair thinks the point of order is 
well taken. 

Mr. Phelps. — I am not making a comment upon the opin- 
ions of Senators beyond stating the facts which are given to 
the world by the press and the Congressional Record. I think 
the gentleman from Georgia should be proud that eight Demo- 
cratic Senators had the courage 

The Chairman. — The gentleman will suspend his remarks 
till the point of order is determined. 

Mr. Phelps. — I trust that the objection of the gentleman 
from Georgia to hearing the truth about the action of his col- 
leagues in the Senate will not be taken out of my time. 

Mr. Blount. — The gentleman from New Jersey is dealing 
unfairly in continuing his remarks. 

Mr. Phelps. — Why could not the matter of order be settled 
if I simply say I read in the public prints that eight Democratic 
Senators voted to give free ships to American commerce? 

Mr. Blount. — I call the gentleman to order. 



4IO William Walter Phelps 

The Chairman. — The Chair asks the gentleman from 
Georgia to cite the rule under which he makes the point of 
order. 

Mr. Phelps. — If this is exhausting my time I would rather 
print the extract from the Congressional Record which gave 
the vote and pass on. 

Mr. Burrows. — I presume while the point of order is being 
considered that will not be deducted from the gentleman's 
time. 

The Chairman. — The Chair will take care of that. 

Mr. Steele. — I rise to a question of order. 

The Chairman. — The gentleman will state it. 

Mr. Steele. — Is it in order to delay the business of the 
House while the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Blount] is 
studying the rules? 

The Chairman. — The business of the House is not being 
delayed. The rule is being sought at the request of the Chair. 

Mr. Blount. — I will ask the Clerk to read from page 132 
of Jeff er son s Manual. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

"It is a breach of order in debate to notice what has been 
said on the same subject in the other House, or the particiilar 
votes or majorities on it there, because the opinion of each 
House should be left to its own independency, not to be influ- 
enced by the proceedings of the other; and the quoting them 
might beget reflections leading to a misunderstanding between 
the two Houses." 

The Chairman. — The Chair stated to the gentleman from 
New Jersey that he thought the point of order was well taken, 
but would be willing to hear from the gentleman after the 
reading of the rule. 

Mr. Blount. — Mr. Chairman, then, with the view of saving 
time, I will withdraw the point of order. 

The Chairman. — The point of order being withdrawn, the 
gentleman from New Jersey will proceed. 

Mr. Phelps. — I thank the gentleman tor waiving his jioint 
of order and will trespass no further than to say that I read in 



His Life and Public Services 411 

the public press and the record of Congress that eight Demo- 
cratic Senators had the courage to vote to give new ships to 
American commerce and new markets to American manufac- 
tures. And now, the Senate having done its duty, it is time 
for this House to do theirs. The measure has so many ad- 
vantages, it supphes so many wants, we ought promptly to 
adopt it. We want steamships; this measure will give them. 
We want markets for our surplus; this measure will give them. 
We want to defend our coasts; this measure will give us a 
merchant marine, the militia of the sea — the most efficient 
means of doing it. 

Such a measure, so useful, so reasonable, we shall refuse to 
pass, if we do reject it, because its enemies call it a subsidy. 
It is not a subsidy, for it is neither a gift nor an excessive 
payment. What is it? It is a fair payment to American 
ships for carrying the mails, and if you ask me how I ascertain 
that the payment is a fair one, I answer, as I ascertain the fair 
price for any commodity or any service. I go out into the 
markets and I ask the i)rice, and in this case I go out into the 
market of the world and learn that this price which we propose 
to pay for carrying our mail is less than the price paid by any 
other nation. No one has yet challenged the proposition, 
except in the case of Germany. Let us pause, then, for a 
moment to look at the history of Germany in this relation. 
Germany did not encourage her shipping by liberal payment 
or gift, and because she did not the gentleman from Georgia 
[Mr. Blount] in great enthusiasm exclaimed: "How business- 
like! How worthy the great statesman at the head of the 
German Empire! " 

But what was the result of all this business and all this 
statesmanship? Germany secured only two steamship lines 
worthy of mention. They run between Hamburg and Bremen 
and New York, between old and wealthy ports. These have 
done a good business and increased their ships, but only be- 
cause they had the business of carrying emigrants, which is 
always lucrative. A line to Australia tried to Hve; but its 
service was so wandering and dilatory, it was such a fleet of 
tramps, that the Germans sent their mails and their freight in 
British bottoms; and look at the result! The old principle 



412 William Walter Phelps 

operated: business followed the flag, and the Germans found 
that London bankers got all of the exchanges and London 
merchants were beginning to get all of the business. So Ger- 
many acted the part of wisdom. These facts were stated in a 
memorial, which was the foundation of new legislation in the 
Reichstag, and upon their presentation the German Parliament 
acted — reversed its policy, and started courageously upon the 
path long trod by its successful neighbors. It agreed to give 
§1,000,000 to a single line for carrying the German mail one 
year to Australia. One million dollars to a single line! The 
gentleman from Georgia praised the old policy of Germany, 
which Germany publicly declared was a failure. Why does 
he refuse to praise the new policy of Germany? Must we take 
the words from his mouth, and, in view of $1,000,000 voted 
directly to the North German Lloyds, exclaim for him: "How 
business-like! How worthy the great statesman at the head 
of the German Empire! " 

But we think this an excessive payment. We have more 
moderate notions. Our Pacific Mail Company has for years 
been performing this same service upon almost the same terms. 
She has carried our mails to Australia promptly, safely, and 
frequently. But we did not give her $1,000,000; we gave her 
$20,000; and for this paltry sum she carried them during the 
year 1884 750,000 miles. 

This is the service rendered to the mail service of this coun- 
try; and this is all for many a year we have paid her for it. 
And yet the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Guenther] has 
spoken of this company as an enemy to the country. Yes, an 
enemy, if to multiply our trade many times and to get no pay 
for doing so is worthy of censure. Yes, if to multiply our 
trade with Australia three times, our trade with Mexico four 
times, and our trade with Central America fifteen times, and 
to do it for nothing, is the act of a public enemy, but not 
otherwise. Yet this is what the Pacific Mail has done for us 
in the last ten or fifteen years. 

This is the payment that Germany makes nowadays for 
carrying her mails. I will take one example from the policy 
of France, and choose one that is near by and familiar, be- 
cause it is easier to understand and to remember. 



His Life and Public Services 4^3 

For many years France has had a steamship line plying be- 
tween Havre and New York. It was old and faithful, but not 
excellent. France sought to improve it. She offered an in- 
ducement, and as a result five new steamers of magnificent 
proportions are entering the line. And what is the induce- 
ment ? France gives each steamer that makes the round trip 
$14,500. The round trip is 6000 miles; so if we pay the 
highest rate warranted by this amendment the United States 
will pay to the American steamer that renders this service 
$3000. France pays $14,500 for what we are to pay — if our 
opponents will let us give this "subsidy" — $3000. And Ger- 
many now pays $1,000,000 for what the United States has 
been paying $20,000. 

I will not seek other examples, but will repeat my original 
declaration without fear of contradiction, that no nation pays 
so little for similar services as we propose to do even under 
this amendment. And I also repeat, in view of that truth, 
that this amendment proposes only a fair payment to American 
ships for carrying the American mails. 

Now, let us consider what we get besides if we make this 
fair payment. We get two things that we want very much- 
steamships and trade. And if you ask me again how do I 
know this, my answer is: First, because there are capitalists 
versed in nautical business who have again and again declared 
their readiness to establish new lines between all the old ports 
and to any of the new if the vote of this amendment can be 
assured for years; but, secondly, because this has been the 
policy of all European nations and has always had the same 
results. This nation wanted ships and wanted trade. They 
paid their money after this fashion we are speaking of and 
they got ships and trade, and almost in ihe ratio in which they 
paid their money. England paid the most, so England got 
the largest returns. 

Since 1840 England has paid $250,000,000 in such subsidies. 
A monstrous sum, and yet there was thrift in it. She paid 
$250,000,000, but she has to-day 55 per cent, of the foreign 
tonnage of the world and 44 per cent, of all its tonnage. 
Englishmen can proudly look over the world and see these 
results, and if there were time for details how many separate 



4^4 William Walter Phelps 

proofs of the wisdom of this policy might be cited like this. 
The United States now sends across the seas 25,000,000 tons 
annually. Statisticians say it is fair to assume that each ton 
costs $6. If that is so, this country alone pays to Great Brit- 
ain $150,000,000 for freight each year. But this only shows 
the liberality with which England spends money to encourage 
the mercantile marine. I want to show further, by a little 
incident, the courage and energy with which, under all cir- 
cumstances, she pursues this policy. France got her steamship 
line into Brazil first — Brazil for whose trade civilization com- 
petes and whose trade ought to be ours. This French line 
carried English mails and freight with safety and dispatch. It 
was practically direct connection for England, as the French 
vessels stopped at Southampton. 

But this did not satisfy England. She had learned the les- 
son too well that trade follows the flag, and she determined 
to send her own flag to Brazil, so she made this extraordinary 
offer, to guarantee eight per cent, on all the capital which 
should be invested in a new English line, and this was in effect 
the form of her guarantee: If the profits made by this company 
shall not equal eight per cent, on the capital invested, then the 
Government will make up the deficiency. Was it a bad invest- 
ment? Look at the trade of Brazil to-day. France and Eng- 
land to-day buy from Brazil about as much of its productions 
as we. These two nations buy between fifty and sixty millions 
of Brazilian products, and so does the United States. But 
when we look for the reciprocity how different the picture! 
Brazil buys of the United States nine millions; Brazil buys of 
France and England forty-nine millions of merchandise. And 
yet, as the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Burrows] showed, 
the bulk of the merchandise which Brazil buys consists of just 
those articles which are American specialties, and which our 
countrymen can produce better and clieaper than any competi- 
tors. The articles consist largely of cotton goods, machinery, 
agricultural implements. But France and England are willing 
to pay for it and own their transportation. We have no direct 
communication, and that disadvantage more than balances the 
natural advantages which we j)ossess. 

I have no time to speak of our long coast, which no navy 



His Life and Public Services 4^5 

can protect, and which must be left to the care of our mercan- 
tile marine. 

The Speaker. — The gentleman from New Jersey has already 
exceeded his time by two minutes. But the Chair will recog- 
nize him in his own right of 

Mr. Bingham. — How much time does the gentleman want? 

Mr. Phelps. — Five minutes are enough. 

Mr. Bingham. — I will yield eight minutes of my time to the 
gentleman from New Jersey. 

Mr. Phelps.— Mr. Speaker, I shall not abuse my friend's 
courtesy, and I will sum up the rest of the points I wanted to 
make. 

There are several questions the friends of this measure ask 
and never get an answer. Let me repeat them. Why do the 
opponents of the measure do so much and pay so much for 
our domestic mails and do so httle and pay so Httle for our 
foreign mails? What is the difference? W^hy have they given 
so much to railways — too much — in money, $100,000,000; in 
land, 200,000,000 acres? And why do they refuse to give 
anything to steamships? What is the difference? And why 
do they encourage us to pay for carrying our mails on the 
land and along the coast more than the service returns, and 
exhibit horror when we suggest that they expend in the de- 
velopment of our foreign commerce scarcely half the money 
which our foreign mails have paid into the Treasury? We 
ask»vou to give $800,000 to encourage this great interest and 
you refuse, although you collect over $1,600,000 in ocean 
postage. Shall we encourage home trade and frown upon 
foreign commerce? 

Mr. Speaker, I want again to refer to the action of the 
Senate, not to abuse the courtesy of the gentleman from Geor- 
gia, who waived the point of order, but to recall a remark 
which the Record officially recorded and the newspapers re- 
ported. A Senator had the courage to state the whole truth 
in this matter. He said his only regret in voting for this 
amendment was that the amount appropriated was too small. 
That Senator was the Senator from Georgia; and I say now, 
not in taunt of the gentleman from Georgia, whose sincerity I 
greatly honor, but in kindness for him — if what we hear of his 



4i6 William Walter Phelps 

great State is true; if it is growing in wealth, population, in- 
telligence, and energy, the sentiments of her Senator are likely 
to be sentiments which his own people will approve and 
reward. 

PRESENTING THE STATUES OF STOCKTON 

AND KEARNY TO CONGRESS BY THE 

STATE OF NEW JERSEY 

[Mr. Phelps was selected to make a presentation address 
August 21, 1 888, in which he said:] 

In response to the invitation of 1864, New Jersey to-day 
tenders to Congress the statues of Richard Stockton and 
Philip Kearny. They are two of her citizens who are illus- 
trious for their historic renown, which was acquired by the 
one in the civil service and by the other in the military service 
of his countr)\ As you may imagine, she looked long at the 
line of heroes that have illustrated her history before she could 
call out from it the fortunate two who shall for all time repre- 
sent the Commonwealth of New Jersey at the Capitol. She 
had essayed in vain to make the selection had she not deter- 
mined to choose a statesman and a soldier, a citizen of the 
distant past and a citizen almost of the immediate present, 
that these marble figures might tell at the first glance that the 
sons of New Jersey at all periods and in all callings had but 
one supreme motive — the welfare of their country. Richard 
Stockton, the statesman, was born at Princeton in 1730, of the 
earliest and best New Jersey lineage. He received the best 
of academic and collegiate educations; he pursued the profes- 
sion of the law and became the head of the New Jersey bar. 
For personal improvement he spent two years in Great Britain 
and received there the distinguished attention his disposition 
and talents entitled him to. He was presented to the King in 
London and consulted there with Rockingham, Chatham, and 
other good friends of his distant home. Edinburgh gave 
him the freedom of the city, and in Dublin he gave the Irish 
that sympathy his countrymen at this distant day still feel for 
that unfortunate island. Upon his return in 1768, he was 
appointed a member of the King's council, and six years after- 



His Life and Public Services 4^7 

wards one of the judges of His Majesty's supreme court. In 
June, 1776, he was elected by the provincial congress of New 
Jersey to be one of its representatives in the General Congress 
then sitting at Philadelphia. As such representative he signed 
the Declaration of Independence. In September the Legisla- 
ture, in selecting a governor, divided its suffrages between him 
and ^Villiam Livingston. Upon Stockton's withdrawal from 
that contest, he was elected a few months afterwards chief- 
justice. Before assuming these duties he visited the Congres- 
sional army as one of a Congressional committee on investigation 
intrusted with extraordinary powers, which were wisely used. 
Returning to his home to superintend the removal of his 
family, whose safety was threatened by the approach of the 
British army, he was himself captured. He was imprisoned 
in Amboy and New York under circumstances of such cruelty 
that his health was lost. After his release, which was made 
the concernment of General Washington by a special resolu- 
tion of Congress, he retired to the ruins of his home at Prince- 
ton a broken man, and died there aged fifty years. 

Philip Kearny, the soldier, was born in New York in 1814. 
He received a fair education, and when of age entered the 
army as a second lieutenant of dragoons. He fought on the 
frontier with the Indians; he was sent to Europe to report on 
French tactics, and fought the Algerines so well as to win the 
decoration of the Legion of Honor. Returning, he went to 
the Me.xican war; he was made captain in 1846 for gallantry 
at Contreras and Churubusco; he was brevetted major. He 
pursued the flying enemy into the City of Mexico, and was the 
first to enter its gates. In accomplishing his escape he lost 
his left arm. Afterwards he rendered service in California, 
and is entitled to a large share of the credit of adding that 
territory to our national domain. He went to Europe, con- 
tinued his studies, and served in the Itahan war in 1859. 
When the Civil War broke out he came back, and May 17, 
1861, took command of a New Jersey brigade. His promo- 
tion was rapid, won by gallantry in many a familiar field — Wil- 
liamsburgh, Fair Oaks, Centreville. He was a major-general 
at Warrenton Junction. At Chantilly, telling orderly and 
aids to keep back, he rode forward himself to see the position 

27 



41 8 William Walter Phelps 

and was killed September i, 1862, only forty-eight years 
old. 

Could two characters have been more different, or two 
careers? Contemplation and action. Peace and war. Stock- 
ton was the model of a statesman; fond of study and contem- 
plation; a man fitted at every point for the duties of peaceful 
society. Kearny was the model of a soldier, fond of excitement 
and action, a man fitted at every point for the stern duties of 
war. Their supreme devotion to patriotic duty was the only 
trait in common. They were two most dissimilar types of 
character, and their grouping in equal honor on this occasion 
teaches us another lesson that an earnest purpose and not a 
special temperament is all that is necessary to make a man 
some way useful to his fellow-men. The Quaker blood in 
Stockton gave him that moderation which philosophy says is 
the one essential of statesmanship. The Irish blood in Kearny 
kindled in him that ardor which gives the courage to despise 
obstacles and to anticipate success, qualities which are indis- 
pensable to military leadership. Stockton did everything after 
mature consideration, upon a judgment carefully instructed 
by study and experience. He was the great lawyer, the wise 
counsellor, the prudent statesman; he did not lack in courage, 
physical or moral. He wounded and fought off a robber who 
assaulted him in the streets of London, and met the physical 
privations of his capture without a murmur. 

Nor did he hesitate longer than to convince his judgment, 
before he declared his independence of a sovereign who had 
shown him personal courtesy and given him public ofifice and 
honor. But, for all that, he was a natural conservative, who 
preferred to run no risks, but to stand by all precedents where 
honor would permit it. He had a love for a complete de- 
corum in all relations, which made him as careful with the 
mint and anise and cumin as in the weightier matters of the 
law. As farmer, lawyer, judge, member of Congress, son, 
husband, father, and friend, he was a model. The well- 
rounded symmetry of his character always reminded me 
of Washington, whose friendship he enjoyed. Except that 
Stockton's life and character had no military tinge, there was 
a striking resemblance between these two men. They were 



His Life and Public Services 419 

both perfect gentlemen of the antique world: courteous, dig- 
nified, methodical, never forgetting themselves, and in justice 
let me say, never forgetting any one else whom they ought to 
remember. Just as I can picture Washington at Mount Ver- 
non, I can picture this New Jersey gentleman sitting on the 
broad acres of Princeton which his grandfather had acquired 
in the seventeenth century. I can believe he had no greater 
pride than in recalling his stainless and distinguished line of 
ancestry, unless Providence had kindly lifted for him the veil 
of the future that he might behold his son, his grandson, and 
his great-grandson occupying seats in the Senate by their 
merits as regularly and as surely as if they were a Stockton 
heirloom. 

How different from this picture is the active life and restless 
genius of Phil Kearny! He cared nothing for details; he 
ignored them all that he might concentrate all his energies 
upon the great principle for which he strove. Toward that 
object he rolled in molten stream his past, his present, his 
future, his memories and hopes, his courage and his parts, all 
that there was in him. Such enthusiasm could not wait for 
the slow processes of reason. He appealed often to instinct, 
knowing that he was a child of genius and that genius was kind 
to her children. The appeal was often not in vain, and then 
Indian and Mexican and Algerine and Italian and Confederate 
looked upon him in his rapid strategy and magnificent charge 
as an inspired madman; and yet when, unwilling to trust to 
these dangerous gifts, he appealed to the ordinary processes 
of mankind, he would show the power to plan and organize, 
which is the basis of the most solid military character. His 
intensity of nature, however, generally controlled him and 
brought with it all its natural advantages and disadvantages. 
He could see only the object at which he aimed, and in pur- 
suit of that object he would ride roughshod over anything in 
his way — not from indifference, not from unkindness, but his 
look was focussed on the distant object, and it could not be 
changed. Had this fierce enthusiasm, this concentration of 
fiery genius been for an unworthy object, it would have been 
inexcusable and baneful. Fortunately it was almost always 
directed to a noble and unselfish end, and those over whom 



420 William Walter Phelps 

he rode healed their wounds and forgave him, knowing that he 
was riding desperately at a common enemy. Brave as a lion, 
tender as a woman, his portrait remains the beau ideal of a 
soldier, and the picture of that slim, handsome figure riding 
all alone to its death at Chantilly, with his bridle in his teeth 
and his only remaining arm waving his sword, goes down to 
history as symbolic of the character and conduct of this gal- 
lant leader, the Murat of our volunteer army. Soldier and 
statesman, hail I farewell! May our country never lack the 
unselfish wisdom in her later councils which Richard Stockton 
gave in her earliest, and may she never lack in the execution 
of them the self-devotion which made Philip Kearny, for his 
country's sake, ride to death as to a festival! 

SPEECH OF MR. PHELPS BEFORE THE NEW 
JERSEY STATE BOARD OF AGRICUL- 
TURE, FEBRUARY 5, 18S4 

As we are to spend an hour together let us, at the start, 
come to an understanding. 

I claim no superior knowledge of agriculture derived from 
the study of it as a science, or the practice of it as an art. 
Perhaps, when I consider that I address the State Board of 
Agriculture, wliose members have, in many cases, made the 
interests of the soil their business, I can without undue humil- 
ity assume that I know less than they do about everything 
except the special topic to which I have given some study, 
and of which I shall speak to-night. 

And yet I would not have my disclaimer so sternly construed 
as to find that I had excluded myself from the guild of farm- 
ers. I cannot recall the time when I did not own a piece of 
land which was tilled, always with pride, though not always 
with profit. I have gathered from reading and the traditions 
of a Puritan ancestry the conviction that every citizen of a 
republic who deserved well of it, should, even at a sacrifice, 
supplement his other activities, however pressing and numer- 
ous, with a little agriculture. I believed, in l)rief, that if it 
were a sweet and honorable thing to die for one's country, so 
it was to farm for it, and I have acted accordingly. The 



His Life and Public Services 421 

reasons of the ancients, when they made this practice one of 
the tests of republican character, still live. Agriculture is 
still the basis of national wealth and prosperity; still the prizes 
it offers are less brilliant and attractive than those which other 
pursuits offer to the ambitious and capable. A duty still calls 
upon the patriotic citizen, who succeeds in the forum, the 
market, or the field, to use some of the resources he has won 
there, in fostering agriculture. Even more than to others 
does this duty appeal to the successful American, for his Gov- 
ernment is singularly indifferent. Where France spent last 
year $20,000,000, Russia $15,000,000, little Sweden $500,000, 
the United States spent only $174,686 in helping an industry 
in which 7,710,000 out of its 17,400,000 workers find their 
livelihood. Nor are Americans all deaf to the appeal. Let 
Roman agriculture boast of contributions from poets like 
Horace, orators like Cicero, soldiers like Caesar; Roslyn and 
Marshfield and Windsor and "The St. Louis Farm" show 
that the American poets, orators, and lawyers find considera- 
tion for the money they spent at the model farm in the de- 
lights of country life, and in the consciousness of patriotic 
contribution to a great and neglected industry. 

Not presuming to class myself with men like Bryant, and 
Webster, and Evarts, and Grant, whose devotion adds lustre 
and dignity to farm life, I may yet congratulate myself and 
you that a similar taste and experience do me this service; 
I shall not repeat the old story. I shall take something for 
granted, and assume that the common doctrines of agriculture 
are known and accepted by you. 

If, then, at the threshold I touch some of them by simple 
allusion, it is as the Apostles' Creed is recited in the churches, 
not to teach but to remind. They are the farmers' creed, 
which no well-regulated farmers' meeting should be without. 

FENCES, TREES, AND WISE ECONOMY 

I believe in removing the fences which cut and slash the 
face of our fair Jersey landscape like an ill-kept razor. The 
wood and stone with which our ancestors laboriously shut 
up broad acres which had no intention to get out served no 



422 William Walter Phelps 

purpose outside of the pasture lot, except to occupy useful soil, 
spoil the view, and drain the pocket. Fences cost us twenty 
millions at the start; they take at least five per cent, on this 
cost to keep them in repair. This is $1,000,000. They take 
six per cent, on this cost to pay the interest. This is §1,200,- 
000, so that they cost us annually $2,200,000 — mostly waste. 
The fences must go. 

We believe in making good roads and in spending money 
judiciously but liberally to keep them so. This is sound policy 
for farmers everywhere. It saves the team, the wear and tear 
of the wagon, and aids not only in transportation, but in the 
other operations of the farm, in nearly all of which transporta- 
tion is an important factor. But the good road is especially 
important to our fortunes as Jersey farmers. We have a right 
to consider among the probable gains of our future the prob- 
ability of great and rapid increase in the value of our land. 
Young men and old, weary of city life, in all seasons of the 
year, spend their holidays in exploring our State; they swarm 
upon our hill-tops and straggle into our deep valleys, intelligent 
and thoughtful explorers. The first thing they notice is the 
highways. How can they help it ? It is the path by which 
they come. It is the last thing they notice. How can they 
help it? It is the path by which they return. The condition 
of that highway will generally fix their choice to purchase or 
seek elsewhere. Business necessity for them demands that 
access shall be easy; and that impatience for freedom, which 
drives them from the crowd and block of the city streets, finds 
rest only in the smooth and open road which invites and as- 
sures unchecked activity. We must spend money on our 
roads as the surest way of increasing the market value of our 
land. Bad roads must go. 

Nor need we pause because the amount is small — perhaps 
limited to the meagre sum that the district has for a century 
expended each year on what it calls "keeping them up" — 
only we must change the fashion of the expenditure. We will 
not "keep up" the roads; wc will not plough and scrape to 
the middle of the road the same dirt which nature will more 
slowly, but certainly, wash back to the sides. Let such im- 
provement cease, and let us expend the appropriation in 



His Life and Public Services 423 

making one piece of complete and permanent roadway. The 
condition of the whole road district would not under this 
neglect be much worse, while the condition of that section 
would be much better. The people among whom I live have 
adopted this modern practice after many wasted years, and, as 
a result, Englewood already boasts miles of park drives which 
are an asset adding immensely to the value of the township. 

We believe in trees. Plant them on the roadside, and 
cherish the scattered specimen that an irrepressible nature 
has managed under all obstacles to keep in our fields. They 
stand for comfort and beauty. Save your forests and use them 
as a perpetual wood and lumber yard. You do not kill your 
cow, you keep her to milk; why kill your forest? You keep it 
not for lumber and wood only. The forests stand, too, for a 
wider utility as having influence for good on the climate, rain- 
fall, and the watercourse. 

And finally, we believe in the intelligent economy that the 
close trade of farming demands. This economy would paint 
the buildings, house the cattle, fill the tool shop, enrich the 
soil, and educate the children — not as scholars, but as intelli- 
gent farming men and women. And all of us believe nothing 
should tempt these intelligent men and women to run into 
debt unless it were for manure. We could make this creed 
much longer. But this is long enough, if practised, to make 
our land worth as much as that in the island of Jersey. That 
is worth ;i^ioo per acre; and many an acre, in our State, 
would under similar tillage be worth as much, for it would re- 
turn an income on that valuation. This is a claim I would 
not dare to make for any other State in the Union, and in 
making it I am brought directly to the subject of this evening's 
discussion — the superior advantages the State of New Jersey 
offers the agriculturist. For some time I have thought that 
our State offered him better prospects for comfort and wealth 
than any other. I grew to think so by watching the general 
drift of facts and talk and public opinion, not blind to the 
wonderful resources of the West, but forced everywhere to 
recognize the wonderful and peculiar resources of New Jersey. 
The examination of better — because more definite — informa- 
tion for the purpose of this address, has confirmed this opinion, 



424 William Walter Phelps 

and I am tempted to say "That which I thought, now I 
know." Mindful of the extent and intricacy involved in such 
a comparison, I will not assume infallibility. But I feel sure 
enough of the results to assume the responsibility of changing 
the counsel of the past, and I say " Young man, dont go 
West, but stay East! " Will you review with me the com- 
parison which I have made. First, let us state fairly the 
advantages of the Western States. 

WESTERN ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES 

The land is cheap. True; although, if the land is good 
and fairly situated, not so cheap as it used to be. There is a 
demand nowadays at a fair price for all good Western lands. 

The land is fertile, easily tilled, and needs no manure. True, 
too; and here is, perhaps, the chief advantage to which the 
West for the last twenty years has owed its popularity with the 
emigrant. The land constantly increases in value; rapidly in 
some points, but at some rate everywhere. This appreciation 
insures a return beyond the natural rewards of his labor, and 
is a bounty to the husbandman. 

The Western farmer can introduce a new method without 
the expense and loss of change from old methods of production 
and transportation. This is a great advantage. He has no 
ruts to get out of, no old-fashioned machinery to store, no old 
apple-trees to root out, no traditions and habits of the neigh- 
borhood to impede and harass him. His land is ready, like 
potter's clay, for him to mould it as he pleases. 

Finally — His holdings are so large that he can farm at 
wholesale and secure the economies of large transactions. 
The man's arm yields to the horse's leg and to the engine's 
piston. 

Now for his disadvantages. His markets are remote. That 
implies long transportation and higher rates. Long transpor- 
tation requires simple and unvaried agriculture. He must 
confine himself mainly to grain and cattle. These are in- 
dustries where the profits are chiefly made by the great farmers. 
Grain and cattle are in that small number of products where 
the rich and wholesale producer has great advantages. It is 



His Life and Public Services 425 

cheaper to raise a million bushels of wheat or a thousand head 
of cattle than it is to raise a thousand bushels or a hundred 
head. There is no such difference between the production at 
wholesale or at retail of eggs and chickens, and fruits and 
vegetables and flowers, and the thousand varied and pleasant 
industries which a nearer market and unrestricted choice give 
to all. Remote markets crush the .small farmer. Even the 
great farmer suffers, because the facilities of transportation 
must be scant and imperfect. The distant markets can be 
reached only by a single railway, and his success is marred or 
made by the corporation that owns it. The problems of trans- 
portation to him are always full of anxiety and often of loss. 
Sometimes the railway is new and lacks sufficient equipment 
to move the crops. Oftener it is a feeble corporation and 
cannot work its way into a trunk line. Again, the rate is so 
high, as to forbid export, or worse yet, the great farmer sees 
some bonanza farmer, who sends a thousand tons to his hun- 
dred tons, receive upon his larger shipment, or perhaps upon 
his larger investment in the railway stock, special rates of 
transportation. The Western farmer, great or small, may 
well envy the man who has his market near and many routes 
to reach it. 

But the gravest objections are those that strike his home. 
Under its roof he looks for the rewards of his toil. All the 
rest is a struggle for living, and here he must test the life he 
has won. It need not be luxurious to make it worth living, 
but it should be comfortable and should have some intellectual 
color. A great many homes have the color. But too often it 
is the home of the pioneer, and dark and empty with the lack 
and pain of pioneer life; the house rude, often unceiled, with- 
out the necessary conveniences, is tasteless inside and out. 
The economy within is rough and sordid, for few male or 
female assistants can be found to take the ruder tasks. His 
table is confined to the products of the farm. Fresh meat is 
a rarity, and so are fruits, fish, vegetables, and everything that 
would be a variety to his fare. Nor can he find diversion or 
compensation outside. There is no refined society for him or 
his family, no church or school; they have yet to be built. 
Such life is a struggle for mere existence, and can satisfy 



426 William Walter Phelps 

only the foreign emigrant whom tradition and experience have 
taught to find his chief enjoyment in the discovery of new 
economies, to prolong it. It is unsatisfactory and odious to 
the Jerseyman who has known a fuller and better life. 

NEW JERSEY AND HER SISTERS 

We have spoken of the East and the West. Now let us look 
at our own State. Our manufactures, with their masses of 
masonry, their talk of tariffs, and the noise and the struggle 
of their trades-unions absorb our attention, and we forget that 
New Jersey is a State of most e.xtensive and successful agri- 
culture. It is small, is counted the forty-third among the States 
and Territories, nor is grain its great industry, yet in the an- 
nual production of wheat New Jersey is twenty-third in the list, 
with a crop of nearly 2,000,000 of bushels. In the annual 
production of oats it is twentieth, in the list, with a production 
of nearly 4,000,000 of bushels. And, generally, we may claim 
that in these simplest forms of agriculture our position is above 
the average, and in agricultural and horticultural specialties 
our position is the first. But even after this statement you 
will wonder at the details. Look at the percentage which the 
annual products of the farm bear to the capital invested in two 
of our counties — one about the worst, the other about the best 
for such a comparison. In Bergen County the value of the 
products is ten per cent. This county lies opposite to New 
York, and the interest is moderate because, in many cases, 
the farming acre has to bear the assessment of a villa lot, and 
many villa lots which produce nothing are counted as farming 
acres. But in Burlington County, which crosses our State 
like a zone, and whose character is agricultural and not sub- 
urban, it is twenty per cent. This is not a bad result in 
either county. But our object is to compare our State with 
other States in all particulars which would decide its relative 
grade as a farming State. Wc will take tlie land itself first. 
What is the value of the farming acre in New Jersey and the 
value of the farming acre in the United States? The answer 
shows the value of the land without tools, or machinery, or 
crop, or stock. As we look through the tables we pause a 



His Life and Public Services 427 

moment to notice the preponderance of the industry which 
your association helps to foster. 

The farms of the United States are worth 10,197 miUions, 
while all other real estate, including the dwelling and ware- 
houses of the city, the capital employed in business and the 
water power besides, is but 9,881 millions; railroads and their 
equipment are worth but 5,536 millions; and mines, includmg 
petroleum wells and gold and silver bonanzas and stone and 
other quarries, are worth but 780 millions. To the ten thou- 
sand millions invested in farming lands New Jersey contributes 
the most valuable land, for while the average acre of the 
United States is worth but $19.02, the New Jersey acre is 
worth $65.15. If, having ascertained the value of our acre, 
we look to see the average value of what it produces in the 
different States we find that in 1879 it was: 

The United States $7-77 

Connecticut 10-97 

Illinois 7S1 

Indiana 3-24 

Massachusetts ii-34 

Ohio 3.66 

New Jersey I4- ^4 

In 1869 the value of all produce was exceptionally high. In 
that year New Jersey maintained its supremacy and showed 
$2 1. 6 1 as the value that was raised on each of her cultivated 
acres. 

In 1879 each acre, sown with seed of com, wheat, or oats, 

produced in the 

United States In New Jersey 

Corn 24.6 28.9 

Wheat 13-6 13-6 

Oats 26. 14 29.2 

Or, if we look at the value of the live stock, we find this result: 

United States New Jersey 

Horses $20.59 $99-48 

Mules 79-49 in-65 

Milch cows 30.21 39-63 

Sheep 2.53 4-44 

Swine 6.75 12.75 



428 William Walter Phelps 

Let us next see where the farming folk are the richest. Each 
person engaged in farming is worth in the 

United States $1,578 

Connecticut 3,070 

Illinois 2,688 

Indiana 2, 195 

Massachusetts 2,529 

Ohio 3.496 

New Jersey 3.591 

But let us look to see where labor engaged in farming gets 
the largest return. Each person engaged in this work earned 
in the year 1879 in the 

United States $314.63 

Connecticut 409.08 

Illinois 4.67.51 

Indiana 346.30 

Massachusetts 371.46 

Ohio 394 41 

New Jersey 500.00 

This rapid survey of results is startling. It i)laces New 
Jersey at the van among agricultural States. In all particu- 
lars her record places her above the average, and in most, at 
the very top. If we look at the land which is the source from 
which agriculture draws all its wealth, we find that an acre in 
New Jersey is worth more than an acre in any other State. If 
we look at what this acre produces, we find that it produces 
more bushels of grain than the average, and more of the pro- 
ducts of a varied agriculture than any other acre, for the out- 
come of the Jersey acre sells for more. If we look at the 
Jerseyman who gets such results from the Jersey acre, we find 
that he has more capital than any other farmer, and that he 
ought to have, because each year gives him a larger income 
than his rival. 

These results are very encouraging; nor are they startling 
when we examine with ccjual care the peculiar conditions 
under which this industry is ])ractised. The results which 
these statistics reveal come logically from advantages which 
New Jersey possesses over all other States, and whicli we will 
now summarize. 



His Life and Public Services 429 

SPECIAL ADVANTAGES OF NEW JERSEY 

New Jersey, by her fortunate position, combines advantages 
which are peculiar to the Eastern and to the Western States. 
In our summary of the inducements which the West offers to 
the Eastern farmer, we mentioned the facts that Western land 
was cheap; that it was increasing in value; and that it was 
easy of tillage. In all these three, our old Eastern State 
competes with her new Western sisters. If you speak of 
cheap land, I think I am correct in claiming that land can yet 
be bought in the southern part of New Jersey for $io per 
acre, not more than four hours from the great cities of Phila- 
delphia and New York, and that within two hours of either of 
these markets good farming land, which has been tilled for 
two centuries, may be bought for $ioo per acre. The 
southern and cheaper acre at the touch of marl yields large 
crops, and the northern acre at the touch of ordinary manures 
— which neighboring villages and towns offer at moderate cost 
— blooms prolific as the plains of Lombardy. The farmer 
who wants cheap land need not go West. We spoke of the 
regular and rapid increase in the values of Western lands, and 
thought this element played, probably, the largest part in the 
Western farmer's gains. Railways come, and a village grows 
upon his prairie; then came a town, then a city. This, of 
course, was an exceptional, but by no means an extraordinary 
fortune. It is not an exceptional but a natural result that this 
prairie, even if it misses the advent of a town, shall regularly 
increase in market value; for the State of which it is a part 
swells rapidly and regularly with wealth and population. This 
increase in value, ordinary or exceptional, no Eastern State 
can claim, except New Jersey. It comes from her position. 
Lying between two great cities, and traversed by innumerable 
railways that connect all parts of her domain with them, the 
overflow of their po])ulations makes a constant and healthy 
growth. No other State of the Eastern or Middle groups 
grew in population as did New Jersey during the last two 
decades. In this regard it stood with the Western States, and 
was compared with them. To this rapid increase of popula- 
tion it owes the regular and ordinary increase in the value of its 



430 William Walter Phelps 

acreage. But it has also cases of exceptional and extraordinary 
appreciation, numerous and dazzling as any found in the his- 
tory of Western development. A peculiar charm of surround- 
ings; a quiet lake; a forest of pine trees; a successful factory 
on a little stream; or the mere whim of a wealthy speculator 
whose eye has caught a pretty view as he is whirled from the 
Exchange in Broad Street to the Exchange in Third Street, is 
often all that is necessary to wave, as with a wand, a village 
or a town into being. Cases are not infrequent where in less 
than two years the village lot has sold for the same money 
which bought the farming acre from which it is cut. A 
prudent farmer should not rely upon, or anticipate such 
extraordinary increase, but he has a right to expect and rely 
upon regular increase, which is derived from regular causes, 
and to count it a proper and certain element m estimating the 
results of his work. And as he cannot shut his eyes to the 
extraordinary advances which come by frequent accident in 
his neighborhood, his own chances in that direction figure in 
the ambitious dreams which fill his moments of leisure. 

NEAR MARKETS 

Easy as the Western prairie is to till where the ploughshare 
and cultivator's tooth moved without let or hindrance, we find 
equal facility of tillage in our Jersey land. The fertile land 
of tlie northern half, originally rough and stony, has been 
worked by so many generations that it lies now without stump 
or stone, a mass of mellow land ready for garden culture; and 
nature made the sandy loam of the southern half equally mel- 
low, and it lies as ready to receive marl as the dough of the 
cook to receive yeast. These are the advantages New Jersey 
has in common with her Western sisters. She has in common 
with her Eastern sisters, but to a greater extent, the neighbor- 
hood of great markets. On the wrong side of the Hudson, 
and of the Delaware, are cities where, in one case, two mil- 
lions, and in the other one million of human beings stand 
waiting to receive their food; and on the right side of these 
rivers, within the borders of this fortunate little common- 
wealth, are cities of a hundred thousand like Newark, of fifty 



His Life and Public Services 43 ^ 

thousand like Paterson and Camden, of twenty thousand like 
Trenton, Elizabeth, New Brunswick, into whose morning 
streets are wheeled from the neighboring farms the food for 
thousands of human beings. l"he neighborhood of such 
markets may be of little value to the great farmer who fills his 
trains with wheat and sends them to the seaboard for foreign 
export, but to the small farmer of varied industries who raises 
flowers, and fruits, and vegetables, and poultry, the value is 
incalculable. In this matter of transportation New Jersey has 
extraordinary advantages. Few spots in the State are without 
two railway communications, many have more, and some of 
the best farming centres are in such propinquity to the great 
cities, that in case of any unjust discrimination they could, 
with a slight increase of cost, transport their own products. 
To the neighborhood of these great cities the Jersey farmer 
owes to a great extent the superiority of his home in all that 
adds to the comfort and happiness of its inmates. The city, 
its libraries, its galleries, its daytime amusements, are within 
the reach of all, and half of the population of New Jersey, 
without extraordinary hardship, can participate in those eve- 
ning entertainments which are the peculiar attraction of city 
life. Constant intercourse with city friends gives that variety 
of interest and thought which keeps the country mind from 
stagnation. 

• ••••••• 

PRESENT DISCOURAGEMENTS 

It is a discouragement to the casual observer that the rural 
population diminishes. A moment's thought would show that 
this does not indicate, of necessity, diminished production. 
Machinery now does the work of many men who are released 
and can seek different employments in the towns. The in- 
dustries connected with the farm — spinning, weaving, wagon 
and tool making is no more done at the cross-roads, but in the 
villages and towns which a protective tariff has built in the 
neighborhood. Not an unmixed evil, for while these towns 
are of great value in furnishing the market they furnish 
great temptation, especially when they grow into cities on a 
hill, to attract the ambitious youth. The superior luxury, the 



432 William Walter Phelps 

excitement, the amusements for the evening, and most of all 
the stories of the great millionaires whose millions vie with those 
of kings, give an unhealthy stimulus to his imagination. They 
know that these pleasures are, and they think that such gigan- 
tic success is within the reach of all, forgetting that in a popu- 
lation of fifty millions under circumstances of rapid national 
development which may never occur again, these favorites of 
fortune can be counted on a single hand. 

FEWER FARMERS, GREATER PROFITS 

This reduction in the number of farmers, so far from being 
a loss to the agriculturist, is a gain, if the population otherwise 
employed increases as it does in New Jersey. Indeed, the 
reason why our Jersey land is worth so much, and the income 
derived from it is so large, lies in the parado.xical fact that 
there are so few farmers in the State. One would naturally 
suppose that the more farmers there were the greater would 
be the demand for farms and the greater would be their value. 
But investigation shows that the reverse is the case. For 
when there are many farmers in proportion to the number of 
those not engaged in that industry the farmers compete with 
each other, and so lower the price of their products that the 
produce of the soil sells for less, and naturally the soil itself. 
Let us look again at the figures: 

Per cent, of Agricultural Workers Value of Acre 

Massachusetts has 9 $43 52 

Connecticut 18 49-34 

New York 20 44-41 

Pennsylvania 21 49- 30 

New Jersey 15 65.16 

New Hampshire 31 20.38 

Illinois 44 31.87 

Virginia 51 lo.Sg 

Kentucky 62 13-92 

Georgia 72 4. 30 

Mississippi 80 5. 86 

This table shows clearly that the smaller ratio the farmers 
bear to the whole jjopulation the greater is the value of their 
farms. Massachusetts has only 9 per cent, of its popluation 



His Life and Public Services 433 

at work on the farm and its land is worth $43.52 per acre. 
Then as we pass down the column we see the value of the 
land diminishing with fair regularity, just as the relative num- 
ber of those engaged in farming increases, until we strike Mis- 
sissippi. Here 80 per cent, of the population are farmers, on 
land worth only $5.86 per acre. 

In this table New Jersey's ratio is fifteen per cent, of 
agriculturists. As we know, its land is worth the most of any 
State — $65.16. This would seem to be a break in the uni- 
formity of the rule. But the proportion of the population of 
the adjacent cities fed by New Jersey ought, for the purposes 
of this examination, to be considered as within her jurisdiction, 
and would reduce the rate from fifteen per cent, to possibly 
six or seven per cent. There would seem to be no doubt, in 
view of these figures, of the great principle that the value of 
agricultural land increases with the increase of the non-agri- 
cultural part of the population. Fertility of soil, position of 
markets, mines, and other resources may affect particular 
areas, but the general principle is assured. We shall find the 
same laws governing, if we look at the value of the products 
of the land as represented by what each farmer earns, and 
compare it with the ratio of the agricultural to the ratio of 
the non-agricultural population. 

THE BENEFITS OF PROTECTION 

Here you meet one advantage of the system of protection : 
it increases the number of those who leave the ranks of agri- 
culture and engage in other pursuits. How the encourage- 
ment which this system gives to manufactures and other 
branches of home industries tends to this result, may be best 
seen by taking an area of country as it would be early in its 
settlement, and then noticing its transformation under this 
economic application. The land will be found at first filled 
with farmers and no others. These will all be engaged in the 
production of the larger crops. They are raising corn and 
cotton. They have no market except that which they find by 
export. They send their grain and cotton to Liverpool. To 
get the com there costs a dollar, and the com which they sell 

23 



434 William Walter Phelps 

at their station for 25 cents a bushel brings $1.25 in Liverpool. 
It adds 20 per cent, to the price which they receive to put 
their cotton in the same market. The Englishmen consume 
the corn and manufacture the cotton at these increased prices. 
Then they send their calico back to the American farmer, and 
in buying it he buys back his corn and his cotton at this 
increased value and pays in addition the wages and other 
expenses of manufacture, of transportation and insurance. 
Some one among their number, wise enough to recognize that 
the struggle to live under such conditions is going against 
them, recognizes also the value of the protection which the 
tariff offers to all who will manufacture calico within the 
United States, and starts his little factory. The calico manu- 
factured in this little building is made of corn that costs 25 
cents and of cotton 20 per cent, less than in England. No 
money has been spent for transportation; and the money spent 
for wages and insurance has been spent at home. That little 
mill was the beginning of a new era for the neighborhood. 
Other industries followed after this. Now, the weak who can- 
not work outdoors get employment indoors; and those who are 
skilful, but not strong, use their skill. Labor and skill are put 
to the best uses. Meanwhile, the farmer finds a larger market 
for the simpler productions, the grain and the cattle, with 
which he began his work ; but finds a greater advantage in a 
market which can consume fruits, poultry, vegetables, etc., so 
that he can now start upon that varied production which is the 
surest source of agricultural wealth. And the variety of in- 
dustries here inaugurated, — for with the mill, come the 
grocery and other trades — tends to produce that balance be- 
tween the consumption and distribution and production which 
is the surest pledge of the State's growth and prosperity. An 
objection urged to this view is that at the beginning, at least, 
the foreign article of manufacture can be sold cheaper than 
the native, and the foreign manufacturer is willing to take the 
com, and the cotton, and the wool in exchange. True, but 
the foreign manufacturer cannot take the egg, the chicken, the 
vegetable, the hay, or the potatoes; nor can he aid to build 
schools and churches, and to pay the taxes. These are all 
left to the farmers themselves. Besides the farmer knows that 



His Life and Public Services 435 

the foreign article will not long be cheaper. He has found 
this out in a hundred cases. The superior quickness of the 
American artisan, the superior ingenuity of the American 
mind in devising labor-saving inventions almost invariably 
brings such a result. He looks around him and sees that al- 
ready nearly everything made at home, that he uses, is cheaper 
than in England. Cotton fabrics, the articles most generally 
used for all purposes in the American farmhouse, are cheaper. 
American cottons are found on the shelves of the English 
shopkeeper. Boots and shoes are cheaper, and the English 
already import some of ours. Our forks are cheaper and the 
English buy them, as they do our axes and our reapers. The 
American farmer would lose if he had to buy any English tools 
or implements. He can buy here wagons, carts, and carriages 
cheaper than in England. Furniture is not a small item in 
the well-kept house of the American farmer, and our furniture 
is at least ten per cent, cheaper. So are clocks and watches, 
tinware, woodenware, and the common glass used by the 
plainer housewife — all these are cheaper. Every manufac- 
tured article is cheaper to-day in the United States than it was 
thirty years ago. Then ninety per cent, were made abroad, 
now less than ten per cent. The farmer may well follow the 
lead of such experience. 

THE farmer's direct AND INDIRECT PROTECTION 

It is so common for the friends of free trade to assume that 
the tariff is for the protection of the manufacturer only, and 
then to infjuire with an air of indignant pity of the neglected 
farmer " why do you submit ? " that at the risk of wearying 
you I must insist on reading the list of agricultural productions 
which are protected against importation from Canada and else- 
where. The great staples of the North and South — wool and 
sugar — are, and have been, always protected. Besides on 
these, the present tariff laws impose the following direct pro- 
tective duties on agricultural products: Rice, cleaned, 2i 
cents a pound; wheat, 20 cents per bushel; Indian corn, 10 
cents per bushel; oats, 10 cents per bushel; rye, 15 cents per 
bushel; barley, 15 cents per bushel; butter, 4 cents per pound; 



436 William Walter Phelps 

cheese, 4 cents per pound; potatoes, 15 cents per bushel; 
poultry, 10 per cent, in value; peas, from 10 to 20 per cent.; 
beans, from 10 to 20 per cent. ; tobacco, unmanufactured, 35 
cents per pound! unstemmed, 50 cents, in addition to a 
revenue duty of 24 cents per pound; on horses, cows, bulls, 
oxen, steers, calves, sheep, lambs, goats, hogs, and pigs, ex- 
cept for breeding purposes, 20 per cent. ; those for breeding 
purposes are admitted free to benefit the farmers; beef and 
pork one cent i)er pound; mutton, 10 j)er cent., and hay, 20 
per cent. 

This is the direct protection the farmer gets by the Ameri- 
can system. 

But the indirect is much more valuable. By fostering other 
industries, giving opportunities and inducements for folks 
willing to labor, to go into other avocations, it diminishes the 
number of farmers, increases the population non-agricultural, 
and by diminishing the number of the farmer's competitors, 
increases his gains. By causing the growth of villages, towns, 
and cities, it gives him a home market. In our home market, 
remember, we are now selling ninety-two per cent, of our pro- 
duction. This shows its importance. But free traders say: 
"It would be better to diminish this large percentage of home 
sales and increase the percentage of foreign." I don't think 
so. And these are my reasons: The home market is the only 
place where you can sell perishable products — and perishable 
products include nearly everything raised in varied agriculture, 
and varied agriculture gives the largest return for the individual 
and the surest support for tlie many. Varied agriculture — 
what we raise near the house and in the garden, flowers, ber- 
ries, fruits, vegetables, poultry — is what makes the profit of the 
smaller farm ; and the smaller farm is what makes the safety 
and the true grandeur of our country. 

THE FOREIGN MARKET LIMITED 

And another reason is, that the foreign market is limited 
and can be supplied elsewhere. The tpiantity of grain that 
Britain needs is very nearly a fixed (juantity. She takes this 
from us, if we sell it cheaper; if not, from Germany, or Rus- 



His Life and Public Services 437 

sia, or Turkey. But were we always able and willing to 
undersell our rivals; in the English market the demand is un- 
certain, and its uncertainty is always against us. It is certain 
that the English demand won't be above the usual figure, but 
it is not certain that it won't be below. The demand will vary 
with the excellence of their harvests. What we have said does 
not apply to cotton and tobacco. There is for these just such 
a demand as there is for the articles of manufacture. 

And for these the demand is practically unlimited. It rises 
and falls with the wealth and taste of the community that uses 
them. Nearly all manufactured articles are, like a few agri- 
cultural products, in some sense, a luxury. They certainly 
are, except in a moderate use, luxuries. Take the fabrics 
with which we cover our bodies: from these the humble house- 
wife takes two dresses; the Newport belle, perhaps, fifty. 
The two dresses are a necessity; very many of the fifty are a 
luxury. 

Take sugar. Life can be, and is often, supported without 
any. The poor man will use a little for his tea and coffee, 
but the pastry-cook and the confectioner use large quantities 
to tickle the palate of a rich man's child. But wheat, and 
corn, and potatoes, and much that the farmer raises are neces- 
sities, and not luxuries, and the consumption is practically 
limited. Whether rich or poor you will eat the same amount 
of bread, but if you are rich you will have more furniture, 
more clothes, more carriages, more wares and merchandise. 

THE HOME MARKET THE BEST 

I enlarge on this well-known rule of consumption because I 
want strongly to impress upon the farmer a reason why the 
foreign market is worth so little to him, less even than to the 
manufacturer. In view of the continent which we hold and 
the swelling millions that are tiding into it, and the varying 
wants of the different zones that girt it, I think lightly of the 
foreign market even for the manufacturer; much less do I 
esteem it for our craft. It is the home market where Ameri- 
can manufacturers and farmers find their profits; they should 
labor with at least equal zeal to protect and keep it. Originally 



43^ William Walter Phelps 

all Americans did, for they were nearly all farmers, and South- 
ern statesmen agreed with Northern that neither material 
prosperity could be secured nor political independence main- 
tained unless we fostered our manufacturers and provided op- 
portunities for varied industry to our people. How came the 
broad line, which so soon separated the policy of the South 
from the policy of the North? Like all political changes — 
from a discovery that their interests were different and put 
them on opposite sides of it. The South wanted manufac- 
tures, but it wanted another thing more — it wanted to keep its 
laborer ignorant and poor. If it kept its laborer ignorant and 
poor he could attain neither the skill of the handicraftsman 
nor the genius of the inventor. There was no such handicap 
on the Northern laborer, and under the stimulus of manufac- 
ture his fingers grew skilful, and his mind fertile and inventive. 
Southern statesmen quickly saw their mistake, receded from 
their position, and began, and have continued, to oppose a 
protective system, the provisions of which gave to the North 
a prosperity which the South could only, at the cost of the 
abolition of slavery, participate in. They preferred to lose 
the home market and keep the foreign, rather than to educate 
the slave. But for their staples, fortunately for them, the 
foreign market was better than for ours. Their staples were 
such that the world offered no real competition, and such, 
too, that the demand for them was unlimited. Their staples 
were cotton and tobacco. Both are luxuries, so that the 
world could always increase the use of them as they increased 
their capacity to buy them. Both staples, in those ante- 
bellum times, before high prices stimulated the production in 
Egypt and India, monopolized the markets of the world. So 
long as the fertility of the soil refused to yield to the unceasing 
draughts of these constant and greedy crops, the Southern 
planters really were in an enviable position of commercial in- 
dependence; they could smile at the rest of the world and 
disdain all political or economic safeguards and aids. That 
our view is correct; that the narrow view of their own interests 
made the Southern people leave the camp of the protectionists, 
is made still clearer by the exception. Louisiana raised sugar 
principally. Sugar had competition. It could be raised 



His Life and Public Services 439 

cheaper elsewhere. The Louisiana planter needed protec- 
tion, and, caring more for his only crop than for his negro, 
insisted upon protection, and always on that account voted 
the Whig ticket. In the middle of the great broad avenue 
that divides the old part of New Orleans from the new, stands 
in bronze the famous statue of Henry Clay, erected in grate- 
ful recognition of his services in protecting that, with other 
American industries. 

FOOLISH FREE-TRADE OBJECTIONS 

To such practical results as these, what say the friends of 
free trade? They rush to hide themselves in the misty regions 
of glittering generalities. Here they are hard to catch, be- 
cause their theories are too impalpable to take the practical 
and formulated shape of propositions. The best one can do, 
who seeks to compress this thin air into something which can 
stand long enough and firm enough to bear an assault, is to 
say that the friends of free trade claim that the system of pro- 
lection is unnatural; that it destroys foreign trade which they 
call commerce; that it stimulates home growth and protection 
to an extent which causes disaster to those engaged in the 
business. The first objection is, that protection interferes 
with the natural laws of trade. Our answer is, that it inter- 
feres with the unnatural laws of trade. Older countries, for 
generations, by legislative provisions and money subsidy, have 
forced trade into channels that conduct it all to their ware- 
houses. These efforts have gotten trade to flow so easily into 
these well-worn channels that they need no longer to force it, 
and as they stand on the banks of their canal and watch the 
enriching tide, they exclaim: "This is the natural flow of 
these precious waters." 

Now when our American friends seek to divert any of it 
they cry, " It is a crime against nature' " To drop all figures 
Great Britain by every contrivance, just and unjust, stimulated 
manufactures until they were well established, the capital in 
them and back of them was so large, and asked so little inter- 
est, the laborers are so skilful, so many, and so ill-paid that 
she could withdraw all supervision and let them take care of 



440 William Walter Phelps 

themselves. And because they now take care of themselves 
she says her trade is natural. But when we proceed to get 
our manufactures by the same methods into the same condi- 
tion, so that we, too, may leave it to natural laws, the Cobden 
Club speaks ill both of our head and our heart. 

Their second objection is that protection destroys foreign 
trade, which they call commerce. I meet this squarely. It 
does not destroy it, but it looks first to the interests of the 
home trade. We need foreign markets only to take our sur- 
plus. Our surplus in agriculture is only eight percent, of our 
total production. It does not stand to reason that we should 
care so much for that market as for the market that takes and 
consumes ninety-two per cent. Nor is it by any means sure 
that commerce as now practised is the great enginery to bring 
wealth to the commercial centres. It used to be, but com- 
merce in olden times was different. The great commercial 
cities that made the e.xchanges of the world and did it so 
profitably that citizens of Tyre, Constantino])le, Venice, and 
Genoa had the incomes of kings, did a different business. 
They did not sell their own products. They gathered into 
their hospitable harbors the products of all climes, and there 
made the exchanges, taking care that the rates of exchange 
were profitable to the merchant prince. When commerce 
means the same things for us, that other continents shall send 
their goods here for distribution, and all consumers shall come 
here to get them from us, then foreign commerce may ask us 
to consider her a rival to our domestic industry. It is not 
now. 

The third objection is that it stimulates growth and i)ro- 
duction, and excessively — so it does. And the few who are 
carried away by greed or a noble enthusiasm suffer. But 
these characteristics lead to suffering in any case, and in this 
case the suffering of the few leads to the gain of the many. 

The money made as the new industry is first developed is so 
much as to excite the cupidity of others. They rush in and 
glut the market. The weaker fail, but the price of the com- 
modity falls, the people get cheap articles, and the manufac- 
turers who are in excess seek other occupation. So goes on 
constantly the process of development, distribution, and ad- 



His Life and Public Services 441 

justment. We accept this loss to the few who are too greedy 
and too sanguine, as a natural law, by which the few suffer 
for the many. Its operation no community can escape. 
Nature uses it to develop all new industries, to exploit and 
popularize all discoveries. It is her method to get new 
machinery into working order, new material into use. When 
gold is first discovered the profits of mining it are immense. 
The story of the miner's success fires the imagination. The 
adventurers of the world seek the mine, and the profits begin 
to diminish just as soon as enough laborers are gathered there 
to ensure regular and continued i)roduction. From that time 
the rewards of labor fall to the normal rate. Many who 
crossed the seas or risked all are ruined, but the mines are 
open, have become, and will continue to be, a permanent con- 
tribution to the world's wealth. So with oil or any other new 
discovery — so with the electric light. At the start great profits 
— nature's way to tempt in enough labor and capital to pro- 
duce and distribute the novelty — and then ordinary profits and 
a loss to a few who expected fortune in the business, but a gain 
to the many, to the world of consumers who have secured for 
ever a cheap commodity. Unless free trade can do better 
than this free trade must go. 

RECAPITULATION 

One word of recapitulation and I will relieve your courtesy. 
We have seen the advantages which our little State offers for 
the pursuit of agriculture. We have seen that each acre of the 
farming land is worth more than the land in any other State, and 
yet that the emigrant can still buy land at ten dollars per acre 
within four hours, and at one hundred dollars per acre within 
two hours, of the largest cities on the continent. We have seen 
that this acre produces as much grain as the average, and in 
the products of a varied agriculture the most, and that this acre 
produces the most in money. We have seen that, nor have 
we failed to recognize the great law, which raises the value of 
the land and its produce as the farmers decrease and the non- 
agricultural population increases. And we have seen how 
favorably this ratio is affected by that protective system which 



442 William Walter Phelps 

all Jerseymen, whatever their party affiliations, are sworn to 
protect. In view of the facts gathered in this rapid survey, 
we are convinced that our neighbors and our children, who 
wish to secure the comfort and independence of country life, 
need not go West, but can stay with us, in the firm assurance 
that New Jersey offers the best field for agricultural industry. 
This is a consummation devoutly to be wished for. And if 
there is disappointment that in telling my story to-night I have 
touched nothing of sentimental or dramatic interest and have 
passed by the sensibilities and appealed to the judgment, con- 
sole yourselves that it is the story of a brave little State, whose 
present is so prosperous and whose future is so bright that it 
has the monotony of peace and comfort. Happy the people, 
who have no annals. Happy the State, where peace and 
comfort quench all the fires of eloquence. 

GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

Speech of Mr. Phelps at Mount Holly, N. J., on Memorial Day, 

May 30, 1886 

I come to-day directly from the task of legislating for sixty 
millions of human beings that I may speak to some of the sur- 
vivors of that Grand Army, which saved the Republic, in 
whose councils I am sitting as a representative of the people. 
I thank you for the invitation which brings me among you, 
that I may assist you in honoring the memories of the dead, 
and that I may tender to you, who, tho' battered and worn 
by past perils, are still living, the grateful salutations of New 
Jersey. She salutes you in recollection of these services in 
which you honored yourselves, your country, and especially 
the staunch old State herself, from whose soil you marched 
more than twenty-years ago to the battle-field. 

THE GRAND ARMY 

It is indeed a " Grand Army " to which you belong. Its 
history is the household story of the North. .\ volunteer sur- 
geon of the Army organized it in Illinois just twenty years ago. 
And I have seen it grow from that humble beginning, until 



His Life and Public Services 443 

now it counts five thousand posts and calls the roll on three 
hundred thousand members. How could you expect other 
than this lusty growth when you recall among its earliest com- 
manders men like Hurlbut, Burnside, Devens, Hartranft, and 
Logan? Your organization represents all the soldiers and 
sailors of America, who were true to their country and their 
flag, and is the only one that opens its doors to every man who 
stood in our great civil contest. And within these doors 
soldiers and sailors of all ranks, brave men of every national- 
ity, color, and creed — officers and privates — all stand comrades 
upon a common level. Its great and hospitable roof covers 
the country. Wherever you wander, east and west, in the 
city or village, ranching on the plains, or mining in camp, you 
still find the veterans of this Grand Army breathing and living 
the Christian principles of its motto, "Fraternity, Charity, and 
Loyalty." A fraternity established and proved by all those 
who offered all they possessed for the common safety; a 
charity, which watches to protect from want the unfortunate 
brother and his helpless family; and a loyalty which is to keep 
alive that ardent patriotism which, like magic, created the 
Grand Army and sent it to the front. 

Alas I Of those who went, how many were brought back by 
tender hands to the graves which flowers have decorated to- 
day! 

Happy dead! if they see that the old banner waves above 
them, and they can hear the hymns in which their countrymen 
praise God that their defenders died not in vain. 

THE CITIZEN SOLDIER 

You do not expect me to say much of military matters, of 
which I know so little and you so much; and I shall soon pass 
on to speak of some of our privileges and duties as American 
citizens. But standing almost within sight of fields where were 
fought some of the great battles of the Revolution, and having 
in mind the splendid record of citizen-soldiers at Trenton, 
Princeton, and Monmouth, I wish to record my interest and 
faith in a well-equipped and well-disciplined militia. 

We used to laugh at them, at the proud tread, the gold-lace 



444 William Walter Phelps 

trimmings, and the resplendent trappings of line, field, and 
staff in our National Guard. Now the laughter dies at the 
recollection that these first rushed to the front and saved the 
capital from rebel hands, and these, returning in other organi- 
zations and under other names, stayed at the front until they, 
the bedizened officers we used to smile at and the holiday 
soldiers we used to think so little of, became the veterans of 
every army corps, and, as veterans, bore the hardships of the 
camp and the march, the perils of the lonely picket, the dan- 
gers of battle, and the horrors of prison. These are the tradi- 
tions of New Jersey's National Guard, and I am glad that she 
has to-day a State military organization in which we can take 
pride; and this county has especial reason to do so, for it was 
under a commander from this county that a battalion of New 
Jersey's militia took and wore the palm at Yorktown. 

As in the past so it shall be in the future. We can trust to 
our volunteers. The experiences of the war on both sides 
established that proposition. It was fought by volunteers 
hastily gathered, and yet no armies were ever marshalled any- 
where that were composed of better material. European 
military critics trained to the old methods sneered at these 
republican armies at the start, but actual experience demon- 
strated in a few months' time that the United States could 
improvise an army of citizens equal to the defence of our 
country against any military power on the globe, and Europe 
sneers no more. 

I am not belittling the importance of organized strength to 
the existence of all human government. Organized force is 
necessary, but you multiply its power manifold by moral con- 
ditions. A handful of policemen at Chicago repelled an armed 
mob of murderous anarchists. Were the policemen with their 
clubs and revolvers enabled to do this because the anarchists 
with rifles in their hands and bombs under their coats were 
cowards? No; it was because the mob knew that behind the 
little squad of policemen were the moral forces of society. 
The policemen suggested the militia of the State, and behind 
them all the resources of the United States. 

At Milwaukee a mob of thousands, in a premeditated out- 
break, threatened arson, robbery, and murder. It was con- 



His Life and Public Services 445 

fronted at the outset by three or four companies of State 
soldiers directed by a governor who never trifled with a public 
duty. One volley was given; no other was needed. It 
quieted that mob, which slunk back to its holes and carried 
its dead with it. 

Cincinnati had a foreign element as large and as dangerous as 
Chicago and Milwaukee. It, too, first whispered and then 
roared its threats of mischief; but the Governor of Ohio, who 
was one of your comrades, was ready to assume responsibility. 
Though young in years, he was a veteran in the service, and 
knew what was the value of a State musket loaded with Gov- 
ernment powder in the preservation of peace. He did not 
wait for the outbreak before he called out four regiments of 
the National Guard, and these guards, while the streets of 
Chicago and Milwaukee were drenched in blood, looked down 
upon Cincinnati quiet and peaceful as a Quaker meeting. 

And while our citizen soldiery keep the peace at home, they 
keep off insult and invasion from abroad. Europe does not 
fear our army, which is little, nor our navy, which is less, but 
the certainty that a million of men trained to the use of arms 
in the National Guard would, at a moment's notice, drop the 
tools of peace and seize the implements of war, did their 
country give the signal. 

NEW JERSEY'S WAR RECORD 

But mine shall be the duty to remind you that New Jersey 
had only 98,806 men liable to do military duty, and that out 
of these we furnished to the Union army 88,305, 10,000 more 
than were called for by the Government. And, remember, 
there were naval and marine enlistments numbering nearly 
5000 men besides. 

That record of patriotism has not been excelled. And you 
may be proud that you were a part of it. Shall you ever for- 
get how you left the field, the workshop, the store, and the 
office to rally around your country's flag? It was a great 
uprising of the people of the land. And it was one where 
labor and capital were not antagonistic. Employer and work- 
man, rich and poor, fought for the same object, in the same 



446 William Walter Phelps 

army, in the same regiment, in the same company. There 
was real equality, the rich soldier and the poor one had equal 
chances of honor, and equal chances of death. There was 
no better fighting and there was no devotion to the cause more 
self-sacrificing than that of these men of New Jersey. For 
that New Jersey is proud of you; for that New Jersey asks 
you each year on this day to accept her grateful salutations. 

PRIDE IN NEW JERSEY 

New Jersey is proud of you, soldiers of the Grand Army. 
And ought you not to be proud of New Jersey? Its past, with 
the legacies of legal and political achievements in its Dicken- 
sons, Southards, Walls, Vrooms, Stocktons, and Frelinghuy- 
sens. Its present, with all natural gifts supplemented and 
augmented by the thrift and skill of man. A land, beautiful 
to the eye, rich in agricultural resources, and out of whose 
bowels you may dig iron — all framed by an attractive coast 
and the shores of lordly rivers, and everywhere crossed by 
lines of rail and canal, that bear to neighboring markets the 
products of its soil and its skill. The State has colleges older 
than the Republic itself. Normal schools, model schools, 
scientific schools, by which the State insures the education of 
its children; while a geological survey, an agricultural experi- 
ment station, a bureau of vital statistics, and of labor and in- 
dustries show the jealous care with which we are gathering 
every item of practical knowledge which can increase the 
wealth and power of our State. With these natural advan- 
tages, so fully and conscientiously improved, who shall dare 
to paint its future? Its population, gentlemen, has doubled 
since you went to the war, and what another twenty years will 
do for it, I dare not predict. Let me hope that we may all 
live to see it. 

THE DANGERS OF PEACE 

This is the State in which you live — and these the ennobling 
conditions of your life. Such privileges suggest correspond- 
ing duties. What are they? In a republic, the soldier who 



His Life and Public Services 447 

rescued his country in war must, as a citizen, preserve it in 
peace. Peace has its dangers no less than war, and the 
soldiers of the Grand Army must be ready to meet them. 
There is the danger you will neglect your political duties. 

ATTEND TO POLITICS 

Do not have too much fear of becoming politicians. Every 
right-minded man, in addition to what he owes to his family 
and himself, ought to feel that he owes something politically 
to the community in which he lives. He has n't finished his 
duties to the community when he has participated in the 
social enterprises and charities of his locality. He has politi- 
cal work to do for it. He has the duty of a citizen — to edu- 
cate and give proper direction to public opinion, and to see 
that the force of public opinion is so directed as to have a 
practical effect in legislation. Public opinion can get practical 
effects only through party organizations. He must join and 
work with one of these. These organizations are not danger- 
ous so long as they remain the agents and instruments of the 
people — not their masters. And they are useful and necessary. 
You must be politicians, as were your fathers. 

OUR FATHERS WERE POLITICIANS 

The men who made and signed the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and afterward framed our Constitution, were farmers, 
doctors, clergymen, and lawyers — men working with brain or 
hand — and so representatives of the toiling millions for whom 
our Government is formed — they made politics a study and a 
duty, and we cannot do better than follow their example. 
Any other course involves disaster to the public weal. 

The citizen who goes about his business and will not concern 
himself with elections, because it is distasteful, must expect 
that others will seize the opportunity — others less worthy, who 
will make politics their trade and get their living out of it. 
The neglect of the worthy to attend to their political duties 
defeats our scheme of government. Its founders never antici- 
pated or provided for a contingency where any considerable 



448 William Walter Phelps 

portion of our citizens would neglect the duties of nomination 
and election. Had they foreseen this political sloth or pride, 
they would have, in all probability, provided for it by a very 
different kind of government. The voter who neglects his 
great opportunity deserves very little respect. 

NO GROUNDS FOR POLITICAL DISCOURAGEMENT 

Again, there is danger that you may accept false and dis- 
couraging views of our political present and future; and that 
you may, worse than all, by your careless words, convey them 
to others. Discouraging views are false. No Government was 
ever so honest as this; and this Government was never so 
honest at any other time as now. The Government for which 
you fought is growing better every day, not worse. Most of 
the things that trouble you would disappear, did you take 
time to examine them. 

OUR PUBLIC MEN HONEST 

You must not cast aside your faith in the honesty of your 
public men. The only reason you have to say that public 
men are degenerating is because your partisan newspaper says 
so. T.et me tell you, from the knowledge your partiality has 
given me the means of acc^uiring, your (iovernment. State and 
National, is not officered and controlled by scoundrels; neither 
are the political parties simply the instruments of designing, 
selfish, and unscrupulous demagogues. I grant you that party 
papers tell a different story; so do stump speakers in October. 
But that does n't make it so. Papers and party orators have 
always made this charge, and no wise man believes it. These 
charges of corruption, extravagance, and incapacity are no 
more emphatic and extensive now than in the days of Wash- 
ington Adams, Jefferson, and Jackson. Indeed, the admin- 
istration of Jackson marked the highest tide of newspaper and 
oratorical detraction. The merciless assaults upon personal 
reputation then made have never since been equalled. Al- 
though before, even in colonial times, he who read the history 
in hostile records, read that the motives of the founders of the 



His Life and Public Services 449 

Government were narrow partisanship, personal ambition, and 
greed for the emoluments of official position. 

THE SCANDALS OF THE PAST 

The jealousy and scandal of these earlier years in our history 
are shocking. And there was truth in it. At that time all 
there was of the Government was personal. The great families 
of Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia, and I am not sure 
but of New Jersey, were a close corporation, who ran their po- 
litical machinery with a skill and selfishness not outdone by the 
bosses of the present day. Their relatives and their adherents 
obtained most of the lucrative offices, and when there were not 
enough to go round it was charged that offices were increased 
for the purpose. There were more rogues in those days; and 
if they differed from ours I fear it was only that then there 
was less to steal. And personal grudges were allowed to oper- 
ate in public places. If the old narratives can be relied upon, 
John Adams referred to the immortal Washington as " that old 
wooden-head," and it is recorded that the Father of his 
Country, who could not tell a lie, spoke of Jefferson after the 
latter left his Cabinet, as a "most profound hypocrite." Does 
our especial correspondent at Washington get anything spicier 
than this nowadays. Hamilton denied, or at least very 
strongly intimated, that Jefferson's claim to the authorship of 
the Declaration of Independence was fraudulent; and that 
pure patriot, John Jay, our first great Chief-Justice, aspersed 
Hamilton's character behind his back. The peace of Wash- 
ington's Cabinet was destroyed by the intrigues of Jefferson 
and Hamilton, rival aspirants for the succession. And the 
President had to dismiss another member of his Cabinet, 
Randolph, the Secretary of State, because he tried to e.xtort 
money from the French Minister. Then followed Adams, 
who had to break up his Cabinet because three of its members 
were conspiring not against each other, but against their Chief. 

For the first twenty-five years of our e.xistence party feeling 

was carried to that intensity that Republicans would not let 

Federal judges try their cases, and Federalists would not take 

their chances before Republican judges. Nor did it stop in 
39 



450 William Walter Phelps 

cabinets and courts — it invaded private life and social circles. 
Bitter and false as is our criticism to-day of all public men, 
who are leaders in opposition to us, the criticism made by our 
fathers was worse. 

And as for the merits of the case, I speak advisedly when 
I say our Government is to-day better and purer than it was 
then, and our public men in the average are as meritorious. 
They are, in my opinion, less self-seeking and their honor far 
more sensitive. And if we have not the intellectual giants of 
those days, the average of our statesmanship is wiser and 
higher. 

These are the three duties which you must not shirk. If 
you attend to them, how shadowy are the dangers which 
threaten our Republic! 

THE L.'\BOR MOVEMENT 

Does any thoughtful man anticipate permanent injury from 
the labor question? Under any other system of government 
there might be. There is none in ours. There is disturbance 
because a great class is opening, readjusting, and settling a 
social question; the workingman is seeking to secure a larger 
share of the profits. He deserves a larger share; and both 
parties seem willing to give all the legislative aid that is prac- 
ticable. Think what our form of government has done for the 
workingmen and how it is exhibited in this struggle. The 
working class inaugurated it, not under the impulse of want, 
but of philosophy and reason. Their dissatisfaction did not 
come because they were poor and suffering. They were never 
before so rich and comfortable. The National Commissioner 
of Labor states that only seven and a half per cent, of the 
working people were idle during the year 18S5 ; and all through 
it their wages were constantly increasing. The savings banks 
of the States where mechanical industries are most numerous 
never had so large an aggregate, nor so large a per-capita de- 
posit, or such a large number of depositors. The industrious 
and frugal wage-workers — the men who really wanted to work 
— were never before more prosperous. Then, what reason for 
the bitterness and intensity of their demand and their effort? 



His Life and Public Services 451 

It is because of certain things the workingmen saw, and a 
certain injustice these things suggested. 

LARGE FORTUNES NOT DANGEROUS 

One thing they saw was large fortunes held by capitalists 
and corporations who had paid scant wages and had exacted 
long hours of labor. They saw, too, that their employers 
worked few hours and ostentatiously and uselessly spent much. 
And they felt an injustice when they contrasted it with their 
case, and determined to seek for themselves a larger share of 
what their labor produces. They ought to have it. They saw 
great grants of public lands to railroads; the sale of large areas 
of soil to combined capitalists of this and other lands. And 
they felt an injustice that their patrimony was diverted, and 
determined to stop it. And they are right. Organized labor, 
keeping within the bounds of the law, with what aid legislation 
can afford, will settle this social and economical question in 
due season. The American workingmen are sensible, and do 
not expect the impossible. They know that under no state of 
society can all be equally rich and great. They know that our 
institutions — so far as human institutions can — give all equal 
chances to acquire wealth and distinction. To those who 
have achieved success, the workingmen of this country have 
always been able in the past to contribute their full number. 
Nor is it less true to-day than it has been at any time in the 
past that the American who is intelligent, industrious, and 
persevering will find the road open to him. Why, almost all 
the employers of to-day are the workingmen of yesterday. 
Why should the wage-worker of to-day despair of being an 
employer to-morrow? Never fear; labor will get its rights 
under the Constitution, and without harming it. Nor need 
you fear any permanent danger that seems threatened by the 
accumulation of wealth in a few hands. Such accumulations 
are evil, but they are a temporary evil. 

These great fortunes disappear almost as soon as they ap- 
pear. You can count on one hand the great fortunes, most of 
them accumulated under your eyes, which still remain intact. 
And yet you have seen thousands of fortunes accumulated and 



452 William Walter Phelps 

lost, either in the hands of those who accumulated or those 
who inherited them. 

Natural laws tend irresistibly to the distribution and scatter- 
ing of wealth. Human laws, however skilfully drawn to defeat 
this law of nature, only retard the process; and we make laws, 
thank God ! to accelerate and not to retard the healthy pro- 
cess. Wealth can only be kept by the qualities that got it — 
watchfulness, prudence, and self-denial. But self-denial and 
the kindred virtues are nourished in adversity — they don't 
grow in the rich soil and perfumed atmosphere of inherited 
wealth. And the son who inherits prefers to spend or is robbed 
under the forms of law by hardier and cleverer men, who 
come out from the healthy poverty of the village to spoil the 
effeminate dwellers in cities. If nature had other laws, and 
under them transmitted the ambition and energy of the father, 
who made the fortune, to the son, so that the same care would 
nurture the growth which founded the fortune, we should in a 
short time see a concentration of wealth which would be ap- 
palling. But that danger we shall dread only when the laws 
that govern the heart and mind of men are radically changed. 

CLASS PREJUDICES ABSURD 

These are the considerations why any attempt to arouse and 
to organize class prejudices has never yet had a permanent 
success in our midst, and there is no likelihood that it ever 
will. And these are the reasons why any attempt to incite the 
poor against the rich by an appeal to passion and prejudice 
should receive the condemnation not only of those who mean 
well, but of those who, to say nothing of moral motives, have 
good sense. Where there is equality of rights and privileges 
under the law, where education and speech and the press 
are free, where suffrage is universal, elections frequent, and 
the conditions of life at the start, as a rule, so nearly equal, 
there is no merit or sense in organizing classes to oppose each 
other. All the while the individuals of the classes that are to 
fight are shifting from one class to the other; and the classes 
cannot stand long enough as classes to face each other for a 
conflict. The deserters from one class to the other can be the 



His Life and Public Services 453 

only combatants, as they encounter each other in the passage. 
Sometimes the classes seem to stand in fixed ranks. At inter- 
vals in our history business depressions and other causes have 
led men to clamor for a social or legal revolution, which should 
loose the cohesion of social forces and precipitate a change. 
At such times they have put into power leaders who promised 
impossibilities, who promised to alter even the laws of nature, 
and then have found they were deluded, and the hard condi- 
tions of life, of which they complain, were not in the least 
mitigated. Such evils of which the i)oor complain are not 
within the powers of government: so politics is not the remedy. 

SOME THINGS LAWS CANNOT CURE 
Inequalities of fortune must exist until all men are created 
with the same tastes and capacities; they are evils which the 
ballot cannot cure. Destroy our present form of Government, 
and change our present society, and the same inequalities 
would reappear in any structure built upon the ruins. They 
cannot be cured — they can be mitigated. Education will do 
the most toward it, and virtue and philanthropy — teaching 
the rich the duty of shaping their lives to the spirit of the 
Golden Rule, and teaching the poor the great truth that hap- 
piness, self-respect, and the respect of others may exist with- 
out money. The world, by education and experience, will yet 
learn the undoubted truth that Agur prayed for the best; and 
that the estate within the grasp of every one of our country- 
men, that midway between riches and poverty, is the happiest 
of all conditions. 

I close as I began, with some things strictly personal to you. 
I hope the time will never come, veterans of the Grand Army, 
when you or I or our fellow-citizens shall forget this day. We 
should be recreant to ourselves and our dead if we did so 
while those men who stirred up civil strife, and who are re- 
sponsible for the waste and blood of a great war, are still pro- 
claiming to the world the justice of their " lost cause," and 
while its chief, marching in triumph through the States whose 
prosperity he wasted, is greeted as a hero and a patriot — he 
the prime mover in a causeless war that sent so many of our 
youngest and fairest and best to untimely graves. 



454 William Walter Phelps 

Keep warm your recollections of those brave comrades who 
lie among us asleep in death. Keep warm your camp-fires for 
the brave comrades who still honor us among the living. See 
to it that your Government does n't forget them, either dead 
or living, and that your children recognize the debt they owe 
to them. By them the Government lives; by them your chil- 
dren have life, liberty, and happiness. Neither Government 
nor citizen must let a veteran suffer. The country is rich, and 
the soldier who saved it has the first claim on its resources. 
The Government must generously provide for the soldier who 
lost the power to earn his own living while defending his 
country, and no man is worthy to represent his fellow-citizens 
in State or national legislation who lacks in sympathy with 
these brave and unfortunate men. Eighty-eight thousand 
Jerseymen left their homes for the battle-field. I do not know 
how many survive; but whether few or many, none must 
suffer. 

And this is the first and great duty of your Grand Army, to 
see that none of your comrades suffer. Cicero said: " The 
men who save a nation are as worthy of honor as those who 
founded it." 

Soldiers of the Grand Army, you saved this nation, and 
while the nation lives it will render you the honor which is 
your due! 

HONORING A DEAD SOLDIER 

In December, 1886, the Grand Army Post of Westwood, N. J., went to 
Washington to place a tablet upon the grave of their commander in 
the Civil War, General Gabriel R. Paul. Mr. Phelps was invited to 
make the address at Arlington Cemetery, and spoke as follows : 

Not for him — not for him so much as for us — is all this that 
we do to-day in this national cemetery. 

These touching services, where your programme success- 
fully blends the gentle suggestion of Christian worship with 
the sterner forms of military prescription: 

The stone whicli we dedicate to-day and commission forever 
to be the sentinel of a great soldier's name — all are more for 
us than for him. 



His Life and Public Services 455 

In this beautiful park, amid the fit companionship of heroic 
souls, he found rest before we came. He had secured it for 
himself by the unselfish, the patriotic labors of half a century, 
and that peaceful rest no friendly hands can increase, nor un- 
friendly diminish. That rest is his own forever. As for his 
fame, before we cut liis name in stone he had written it by his 
own glorious achievements in history. And history shall keep 
his memory green longer than this marble, for his memory 
shall last as long as his country. His fame is his own forever. 

General Paul needed no monument. Perhaps he was better 
without one. The Romans claimed that the hero was happier 
who had no monument, that the visitor, indignant at such 
neglect, might ask, " Why has he none? " 

Had this been the fate of General Paul, how frequent would 
have been the rapid questionings? He was the hero of three 
wars. He fought the Seminoles in the Everglades, the Mexi- 
can in his chaparral, the rebel in the wilderness — where is his 
monument? 

Is it on Tampa Bay, where he captured a camp of the 
savages? 

Is it on Chapultepec, up whose heights he led the band that 
captured the citadel and lowered the Mexican flag? 

Is it at Gettysburg, where a fratricidal bullet closed the 
eyes that for thirty years had looked defiance at his country's 
foes? 

Had there been no tablet, would not a hundred questions 
like these have kept his name and his fame among the living? 

But it was fit and necessary for you, soldiers of New Jersey, 
who were in the brigade which he commanded, and who owe to 
his daring and masterly leadership your pride in that flag and 
in your individual records, that this visit should be made and 
this tablet should be placed and dedicated by you, his soldiers 
and his children. And you have done it well. Nor will you 
ever regret any difficulties of the undertaking. The conscious- 
ness that you have done to the utmost all that gratitude could 
suggest for your gallant commander will long warm your hearts. 
And when you return to your happy homes in your favored 
State your honored seat in the chimney corner, for you are old 
men now, will be the softer for your patriotic journey. 



456 William Walter Phelps 

You have honored yourself, your post, and the Grand Army, 
whose traditions you have obeyed, whose annals of effective 
work in preserving a living recollection of our soldier dead, 
you have by this act illustrated. Persevere in this good work, 
work as those whose time is short. 

For each fortnight a full company is mustered out. Each 
year a brigade marching with muffled drum enters the eternal 
camping-ground. So working you can enter sustained and 
soothed by the thought that the honor and recollection you 
worked to give to others shall be given to you; and that your 
name and your doings will be held in honored memory, as 
becomes the soldiers and friends of Gabriel R. Paul. 

AT A NEW ENGLAND DINNER 

Address delivered by Mr. Phelps at the annual dinner of the New England 
Society in New York, December 22, 18S6 

This is certainly very trying, unless one is like Sherman and 
Woodford and Talmage, who don't care a rap what they say. 
I wish I were back this moment in Congress. No one listens 
there, and a man speaks so much better when no one listens! 
This silent attention with which you are starting makes me 
nervous. I am not used to it. I never saw anything like it in 
Washington except last week at Arlington. I went out there 
with a few Jersey veterans to place a tablet on the grave of 
their old commander. I made a long speech under the trees 
and in the snow, yet the vast majority of my audience never 
stirred until I was through. Nor did they then. I wish you 
had all been there, gentlemen. I wish your fascinating Chair- 
man, who always gets what he wants, except now and then a 
fee, were there now. I told him I would better not come. 

" Think it over," said he, " and you '11 feel better about it." 

And I did think it over, and I am thinking it over now, and 
if you want to know how I feel, ask Dr. Talmage about the 
drunken man he found sitting on the steps of his Tabernacle. 
Dr. Talmage takes every one in, in that Tabernacle; so he 
tried to take this man. But the man refused. 

" I was thinking I would join your Church," he said, " but 
the longer I think about it, the sicker I feel." 



His Life and Public Services 457 

Another thing against your President. He promised to 
send the last report, that I might see how I ought to speak. 
That is one promise he kept. The report came in an envelope 
that cheerfully suggested a public document or a receiver's 
fee — something that you get for nothing. And when I opened 
the report I read: " The Last Speech of Daniel Webster be- 
fore the New England Society of New York." 

Do you wonder, gentlemen, that I am forced to say that I 
feel, like Artemus Ward, with naked cannibals brandishing 
their spears at his breast, " not dismayed but somewhat dis- 
couraged "? Indeed, nothing encourages me but the recollec- 
tion of the heroic sufferings of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the 
knowledge that not a man who hears me can vote at the Jersey 
polls; and yet, if we can believe New England orators, the 
Pilgrim Fathers never had a dinner, and if they never had a 
dinner how could they have an after-dinner speech? Or if 
they had a bad dinner, what kind — ? But Mr. Depew can 
answer that. For he cannot deny that the subject was 
brought to his attention, in the course of business, by a recent 
letter of this purport: 

' ' To the President of the Central Road. 

" Sir: They say you are a great after-dinner speaker. Will 
you kindly inform me what kind of a speech you could make 
if you got your dinner at the Poughkeepsie restaurant? " 

I thought I would speak about Congress to-night. I thought 
it would be a novelty to this sated audience for a man to speak 
of anything he knew something about. Great orators can't 
afford to do it. Whoever heard Dr. Talmage speak of re- 
ligion ? And yet he speaks on everything else — the Brooklyn 
Bridge, the shop-girl, the Stock Exchange, and the Devil. Or 
Depew speak of railways? Yet who ever made a greater rail- 
way success ? " Labor reduced from 75 to 55 percent.," says 
the last report. Why, at this rate there will be no labor at all 
on the Central ! and that 's just what his friends said when 
he took the road. Well, one thing is certain, the Vanderbilts 
won't get much work out of Chauncey! 

And our fiery Grady, did he say one word of newspapers ? 
And yet he has made the New South he spoke so touchingly 



458 William Walter Phelps 

of — made it with his Atlanta Constitution, whose weekly has a 
circulation of ninety thousand, gentlemen. And he knows 
how to run a paper, too. He noticed a citizen as dead. The 
citizen appeared alive! "Can't correct it," said Editor 
Grady. " But I '11 put you in among the births." 

CONGRESS FROM PERSONAL OBSERVATION 

I want to say two or three things about Congress. They 
are the results of personal observation, and they are very dif- 
ferent from the common impression. For these wrong impres- 
sions I think the newspapers are to blame, our city papers 
more than our country ones. Yox that matter, I sometimes 
think that our city papers, as a class, are singularly out of 
sympathy with the millions of Americans who live off of Man- 
hattan Island. It was certainly from them that I got my ideas 
about Congress. When I went up to Washington first, some 
fourteen years ago, I felt sure I was going into bad company 
— that I should find Congressmen a bad lot, many of them cor- 
rupt, a majority self-seeking, and nearly all stupid. Actual 
contact soon convinced me of my error. And I am here to- 
night to say that I do not know where one could elsewhere find, 
in a collection of citizens of the same size, a larger number of 
high character than in the House of Representatives. The 
papers spoke of gross intemperance. I found a majority of 
them men who conscientiously abstained from all intoxicating 
drinks, while moderation was conspicuously the rule. I 
have seen but two cases of intemperance on the floor of the 
House, and these were not gross, and were, in a measure, 
excusable. 

I expected to find most of the Members irreligious, disso- 
lute, and profane. I don't pretend to know the secret vices 
of any of them — how fortunate, gentlemen, that no one can 
know yours! — but I know that as far as their associates can tell 
very many are religious, while the general tone of conduct and 
conversation is that of self-respecting gentlemen. Especially 
I was taught that many were corrupt, selling their votes and 
turning ready ear to every solicitation to private gain. What 
were the facts ? In the Eorty-third Congress, when carpet- 



His Life and Public Services 459 

bag districts made it a bad average, there were but thirteen 
men of whose motives any one had a suspicion, and only five 
who were known to be venal. And so exceptional and con- 
spicuous were these cases that the greenest Member knew them 
by name, and their influence was n't worth paying for. I re- 
member having a desk between Mac Dill of Iowa and Mac- 
Dougal of New York, both young Members like myself. I 
often entered when the roll-call was in progress on some 
claim. 

"Well, Mac," I would ask, turning to either Member, 
" which way do we vote ? " 

And in a score of times the answer would be made and re- 
ceived with intelligent chuckles: " I don't myself know any- 
thing about it, but I see that such a Member " — naming one 
of the thirteen — " has voted for it, so we 'd better vote against 
it." And we always did. This was the Forty-third Congress, 
and in no one since has there been anything like so many sus- 
pects. There are three hundred and twenty-five of us, taken 
from all sorts of districts, nominated and elected in all sorts of 
ways. Does not this give most gratifying evidence of the deep 
underlying recognition of civic responsibility, which controls 
the average American citizen ? I don't mean to say that these 
Representatives are not eager to retain their positions and in- 
crease their influence and fame, nor that they are not often 
unscrupulous as to the means; but I do mean to say that all 
of them, even the worst, have a great regard for their country, 
and a great sense of the honor of being a trustee of its good 
name, and that this feeling is in nearly all cases a controlling 
one. The Member may be rough and coarse, indifferent to 
delicate considerations of manner, and even of matter, which 
you and I consider most important; but for all that, no one 
will get him to vote for what he thinks is against the public 
good any quicker than you or I would. If he does vote 
wrong, as you and I think he does pretty often, it is because 
he is ignorant and mistakes the relation of the measure to the 
public weal. If he votes for a bad measure, the reason, in 
ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, is because he thinks it is 
the right one. Shall we not recognize the purity and worth 
of his motive ? 



46o William Walter Phelps 

REPRESENTATIVES COME FROM THE PEOPLE 

Does this surprise you ? Consider these men are Represen- 
tatives of the people who elect them, and the people still, 
thank God, are singularly moral and patriotic. Don't fail to 
notice the distinction I make between moral principle and in- 
telligence. I don't claim that all the Members of Congress 
are intelligent; neither are the constituencies. Few Members 
have any knowledge of historical precedent and of economic 
science, or skill in the arts of statesmanship, the power to 
reason and persuade — to sum their lacking in one word, cul- 
ture. But how few constituencies have any culture themselves 
or want it in their Representatives. Nor am I sure if these 
ruder constituencies found their Members full of this culture, 
that they would find them so ready to express and enforce the 
peculiar wants of their districts in Congress. The Member 
might represent better what the district ought to want, but 
would be less likely to represent what the district actually 
does want. 

The editor does n't think of this. He belongs to the cul- 
tured class, and has no patience with a Member's slow appreci- 
ation of economic truths. Ignorant of the honest purpose 
of the Member, the editor thinks his indifference is not intel- 
lectual, but moral. He assumes that because it is so plain to 
him it must be plain to the Member, and that the Member re- 
fuses to recognize the value of the truth, because he is per- 
verse; whereas if the editor knew the Member, he would see 
that the Member's ignorance of political theories was dense, 
but that his wish to adopt the theory which was best for the 
country was an ardent one, and a sure ground of hope and 
encouragement. The discovery would show the editor that 
all that was needed was patience and time, till the well-dis- 
posed Member should understand the truth. Besides, the city 
editor with all his culture, and the city Member with all his 
economic lore, is not always the one who is wholly right. Po- 
litical economy is a science which is not a science. There are 
too many elements which will not come to stand for generali- 
zation, and too many truths which seemed like axioms yester- 
day, and which the facts of to-day turn into untruths; so 



His Life and Public Services 461 

sometimes I feel tempted to confess that the Western Member, 
by his stolid hold upon facts, may have been as helpful to 
legislation as we in the ambition of our theories. If the West 
accepts theory too slowly, how often have we seized it with 
an excessive zeal. 

FINANCIAL QUESTIONS AS AN EXAMPLE 

Take the money questions. Here we are apt to be dog- 
matic, and seem to have most right to be. Shall we not con- 
fess that we said, and said it according to laws which have 
governed human affairs from the beginning, " There can be 
no resumption when we lack the money, and every creditor 
knows that there is not enough to pay him and the rest," while 
the Western Member, who knew nothing of laws which had 
governed human affairs from the beginning, and who seemed 
to care less, but who knew and cared very much what the peo- 
ple of his district wanted, said, " The way to resume is to re- 
sume " — and resumption was a fact. Or take another instance. 
If ever there was a monometallist it was I, and when ten years 
ago Members who lived near the silver mines spoke to me of 
bimetallism I felt outraged that they should insult me in what 
seemed to me an unblushing effortto aid their section and indus- 
try at the expense of God's truth and the National safety. The 
silver men are not all right yet, and they are very wrong to 
cling still to a depreciated dollar. But because they are wrong 
at this point, I am not going to forget that I was wrong at the 
other. I admit now, as the world does, that gold as the only 
legal tender is impracticable, and that the ultimate outcome of 
our currency troubles must and will be the use of two metals. 
A silver dollar shall pass as a gold dollar, only the silver dollar 
must have enough silver to be worth the gold dollar; and that 
is nothing but bimetallism, and the "stupid " Western Member 
has brought us and the world to that conclusion. 

If I have, in the few moments allotted to me, done anything 
to correct a local public opinion that has done great injustice 
to an earnest, patriotic, and worthy body of men, I shall be glad 
that I came here this evening; glad for the sake of the House 
of Representatives, which I greatly respect, and of which I am 



462 William Walter Phelps 

proud to be a Member; glad for your sake, for it is a pleasanter 
thing to think well of those whom you have made your rulers. 
And for my own part, if you are dissatisfied with what I have 
said this evening, my only comment is that which a little girl 
made to her mother, who chided her because God would not 
be pleased with her sleepy prayer: "Well, it 's the best He 
will get out of me to-night." 



THE END 



APR 25 \^^J'i 



